Best of the Burg 2026: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Best of the Burg 2026 is and who runs it

Best of the Burg 2026 is a readers' choice ballot for local businesses in the Lake Havasu City, Arizona market. The organizer is River City Newspapers, the publisher whose account also carries Best of Havasu and whose Best of the Burg page runs under the Wickenburg Sun masthead. The ballot is hosted on Second Street, one of the most widely used platforms for newspaper readers' choice programs, at the havasunews.secondstreetapp.com address.

The program sits in the best-of vertical: a public vote where readers name and support favorite local businesses across a set of categories. The ballot type used for the 2026 edition is a combined nomination and voting ballot, so a supporter's pick both names a business and counts as a vote in the same action. The mechanic is public participation rather than a judged or editorial selection.

Because the publisher operates several ballots from one account, it is easy to land on a sibling program by mistake. The address in the table above is the Best of the Burg ballot specifically, and each edition year has its own page under the same host.

The dated record: editions and the 2026 window

Four editions of Best of the Burg are confirmed: 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Each ran on the Second Street app under River City Newspapers, and each has its own ballot address, so the 2023, 2024 and 2025 rounds remain reachable alongside the current one. That four-year span makes this an established annual series in the Lake Havasu City market rather than a one-off promotion.

The 2026 edition opened on July 13 and closed on August 19, and its status is closed. The window sat in mid-summer, which matches the pattern a four-year series implies, though the organizer has not published forward dates. The next expected edition is 2027, and its open and close days are not yet announced.

Two things about this ballot are not published anywhere in the organizer's material: the list of categories on the ballot, and any rule on how often one supporter may vote or who is eligible to take part; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Those gaps matter for anyone planning a support push, because both the category list and the voting rule shape what a campaign can and cannot do within the ballot's terms.

For comparison within the same publisher, Best of Havasu 2026 ran from June 15 to August 1, a window that started two weeks earlier and closed about two and a half weeks before the Burg ballot did. The two programs are distinct ballots despite sharing an account and a platform.

How a supporter votes on the Best of the Burg ballot

The literal mechanic is simple. To vote, a supporter loads the ballot page on Second Street, moves to a category, selects the local business they want to back, and submits. Because the 2026 ballot was set up as a combined nomination and voting ballot, there is no separate nomination round to wait for: the same screen handles naming a business and casting the vote. A supporter who wants to back a business in several categories works through the ballot field by field.

The host platform shapes the experience. Second Street ballots run in a browser, load category by category, and present the publisher's own branding around the form, which in this case is the River City Newspapers and Wickenburg Sun identity. No app download is involved; the ballot lives at the havasunews.secondstreetapp.com address during the live window and stays there after close.

What the ballot does not state publicly is any per-supporter limit. The organizer has not printed a daily vote rule or an eligibility requirement for this program. In practice that means a supporter should read whatever the live form asks of them when the next window opens, since the form itself is the authority on whether a return visit or a registration step is required.

Timing matters as much as mechanics. The 2026 window ran five weeks, from July 13 to August 19, and closed ballots accept no further votes. A supporter who misses a window waits for the next edition, expected in 2027, at the same address under the same publisher.

How this ballot sits beside its Arizona neighbours

Best of the Burg is one of several readers' choice ballots in Arizona, and the closest neighbour is its own sibling under the same publisher. Best of Havasu is run by River City Newspapers on the same Second Street account, aimed at the same Lake Havasu City readership, but it is a separate program with its own window, its own categories and its own results. In 2026 the two ran on overlapping summer schedules without merging.

Beyond the publisher's own account, the state has a set of CommunityVotes ballots in other markets: CommunityVotes Buckeye, CommunityVotes Chandler, CommunityVotes Gilbert and CommunityVotes Tempe. Those are different organizers in different cities, so a rule or a date from any of them says nothing about the Burg ballot.

There is also Courier Cares Christmas Lighting Contest, a seasonal ballot in a different vertical altogether. The lesson for a supporter or a business owner is that Arizona's local ballots answer to their own publishers: dates, categories and rules travel with each program, not with the state.

What distinguishes Best of the Burg among these Arizona ballots is its publisher's reach: River City Newspapers runs ballots, sweepstakes and seasonal contests from one Second Street account, and the Burg page carries the Wickenburg Sun masthead, tying the program to an established local newsroom identity.

Strengthening support in this ballot

Support in Best of the Burg comes from public participation, so the work a business can do is the work of turning customers into voters while the window is open. The 2026 window ran five weeks, which is long enough for a steady ask across receipts, counter signs and social posts rather than a single push near the deadline. The ballot's combined nomination and voting format means one action from a customer does the whole job.

The organizer's published position on outside help is simply absent: River City Newspapers has not printed rules on purchased support or third-party campaigns for this program. That silence is not permission, and it is not a prohibition; it means the live ballot's terms are the only authority when the 2027 window opens. A business planning paid support should read those terms first, and our award votes page explains what such support generally involves.

Because the category list is unpublished, a business also cannot know in advance which category its customers would vote in. The practical move is to ask customers to search for the business by name on the live ballot once the next edition opens, which works regardless of how the publisher has grouped the categories that year.