Courier Cares Christmas Lighting Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

A photo contest, not a business ballot: what's confirmed

The Courier Cares Christmas Lighting Contest asks Prescott, Arizona residents to submit photos of their own holiday lighting rather than nominate a business for recognition. The Prescott Daily Courier runs it on Second Street at dcourier.secondstreetapp.com, with the public then voting on the submitted photos.

Two confirmed years anchor the contest so far, 2024 and 2025. The most recent window ran November 28 through December 20, 2025, and has since closed. Neither a category list nor a per-voter limit accompanies that listing. A confirmed 2024 address sits behind the current one, so the Prescott Daily Courier has run this particular holiday format at least twice rather than trying it once and dropping it.

Why this Prescott contest looks nothing like its Arizona siblings

The Prescott Daily Courier's own listing for the Courier Cares Christmas Lighting Contest is coded as a user-submitted photo vote, not a nominate-and-vote business ballot. That puts it in a different category entirely from the readers'-choice programs run across Arizona under a similar Second Street setup.

CommunityVotes Buckeye, CommunityVotes Chandler, CommunityVotes Gilbert and CommunityVotes Tempe each ask the public to weigh in on local businesses in their own separate cities. Arizona Daily Star Readers' Choice and Experience AZ widen that same business-ballot format across a larger region. None of the six touches a Prescott holiday photo, and the Courier Cares contest has no bearing on any of their results either.

What the photo format actually changes for an entrant

A business ballot asks a reader to pick among named nominees; this contest asks a supporter to back one specific photo among however many residents submitted. There is no roster of businesses to check here, no category to browse, only individual entries tied to whoever uploaded them. That also means there is no separate nominations stage the way a readers'-choice program often runs one: a photo goes up, and voting on it begins from there, based on what the current listing shows.

Two editions, both landing in the same holiday stretch

2024 and 2025 both confirm a late-November-through-December window for this contest, closing on December 20 in the most recent year. That's a narrower, more consistent pattern than a two-edition business ballot typically shows, simply because a holiday lighting contest is naturally tied to the season itself rather than to an arbitrary date the organizer could move freely.

Even so, nothing published guarantees a 2026 contest opens on exactly the same late-November date, or that it runs at all. Two years of a pattern is suggestive, not a confirmed promise; dcourier.secondstreetapp.com is where a 2026 window would actually appear once the Prescott Daily Courier decides to run it. A business ballot with only two editions behind it carries the same caveat, but a seasonal photo contest has one extra reason for caution: a newspaper can quietly retire a holiday feature between one December and the next without needing to announce anything in advance.

Payment isn't part of anything confirmed here either, for the resident submitting a photo or for the supporter backing one. That matches how Second Street's user-submitted photo contests are ordinarily structured elsewhere.

Building support for a specific photo, not a business listing

Because this contest rewards one submitted image rather than a named business, the practical move for an entrant is making sure the exact photo link reaches people directly, rather than pointing supporters at the general dcourier.secondstreetapp.com address and hoping they find the right entry. Sharing that link personally, and following up more than once across the roughly three-week window, does more than a single mass request sent right before December 20.

A photo contest carries the same risk as any public vote when activity looks automated or fake: the entire submission can be put at risk regardless of how charming the display actually is. With only two confirmed years behind it, this contest hasn't built up the kind of established audience that might absorb an unusual pattern in votes without drawing a second look. Neighbors, family and people who genuinely admired the lights in person are a steadier source of support than any attempt to manufacture activity from accounts with no real connection to Prescott.

A strong photo tally is not the same as a declared winner; the Prescott Daily Courier alone settles that once its own review finishes. is buying votes legal is worth reading before treating any vote total as decided in advance. Buying votes online explains what paid outside help generally means for a public photo vote like this one, and award-vote campaign planning covers the readers'-choice format the Prescott Daily Courier runs in its other Arizona markets.