Best of Desert Community's Choice Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Best of Desert Community's Choice Awards is, and who runs it

Most Gannett | USA TODAY Network local ballots carry a "Best of" name tied to a region, such as a valley or a county. This one is the network's desert-market variant: the Best of Desert Community's Choice Awards, branded as the Official Community's Choice Awards, celebrating the leading businesses and organizations across the Palm Springs area of California. The "Community's Choice" framing is the first difference a reader notices, and the market is the second. Where sibling programs cover broad regions, this ballot is anchored to one desert market and its local business community.

The ballot itself lives on the Your Choice Awards platform, the network's own contest host, at yourchoiceawards.com/palmsprings/. The program is a business-vertical readers' choice award: the page describes it as celebrating businesses and organizations, and the site's own navigation lists How It Works, Categories, an Awards Gala, a Winners Section, Business Resources and a FAQ. The copyright line on the page reads USA TODAY NETWORK Ventures, which places the program squarely inside the network's local media operation rather than with an independent chamber or an outside contest company.

The dated history of the Palm Springs ballot

Two editions are confirmed for this program: 2025 and 2026. The 2025 cycle ran its nomination round October 1-22, its voting round December 12-28, and announced winners on March 11, 2026. The 2026 cycle follows the same seasonal shape shifted slightly later: nominations open October 8 and run through October 29, the voting round is scheduled for December 16-30, and winners are announced March 2, 2027. Both cycles therefore put their public vote in the second half of December, with a winners reveal the following March.

The program's own page adds scale and stakes to those dates. It states that each year the awards recognize over 480 businesses and organizations thanks to community involvement. Nominating carries its own incentive: the page tells nominators they will be entered to win a $250 prize. The page leaves out the roster of category names behind its category list, so confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

One structural fact matters for planning. Only the highest-placed companies in each category advance from nominations to the voting round, so the October window decides who is even on the December ballot. A business that misses the nomination stretch waits a full year for the next chance.

How a supporter votes in the 2026 round

The supporter's job is simple and repeatable. During the voting round, which runs December 16-30, 2026, a supporter visits the program's page on the Your Choice Awards platform, finds the category their chosen business or organization is in, and casts a vote. The program's stated rule allows a daily vote in every category for as long as the voting round runs. That daily return is the mechanic that separates this ballot from a single-shot poll: a supporter who truly backs a Palm Springs business can come back every day of the fifteen-day window and vote again in every category that business appears in.

The sequence in practice looks like this. Open yourchoiceawards.com/palmsprings/ during the voting window. Browse or search the category list for the business you want to support. Select it and submit the vote for that category. Return the next calendar day and repeat, because the daily allowance resets per category rather than being spent once for the whole ballot.

Two practical notes follow from the schedule. First, the December window is short relative to the attention a local campaign needs, so supporters who plan their daily returns from December 16 onward give a business a steadier base than a last-day push. Second, the program's page does not say whether voting requires an account or login, so the live form during the voting round is the place to see exactly what is asked of a supporter.

How this ballot sits beside its California siblings

Gannett | USA TODAY Network runs a family of these community ballots across California, and each answers to its own market rather than to a statewide list. The closest structural relatives on this site are Best of North State Community's Choice Awards, which shares the Community's Choice naming, and the regionally named programs: Best of Central Valley Business, Best of Marin, Best of Orange County, Best of San Diego & Best Restaurants and Best of Silicon Valley.

What separates the desert program from those neighbours is the combination of market and branding. Palm Springs is a resort-economy market, and the ballot's own description, celebrating businesses and organizations in the Palm Springs area, points at a hospitality-heavy local field rather than a metro-wide directory. The Community's Choice name also signals the network's premium community-awards treatment, complete with an Awards Gala, which not every sibling listing carries in the same way.

For a reader comparing programs, the practical differences are schedule and scale rather than kind. Every program in this family uses the same Your Choice Awards platform and the same broad shape, a nomination round followed by a public voting round. The desert edition's distinguishing dates are its October 8-29, 2026 nomination window and its December 16-30, 2026 voting round, and its stated field of over 480 recognized businesses and organizations.

Strengthening support for a Palm Springs nominee

Because this ballot allows a daily return in every category, the highest-value habit for a nominee's supporters is rhythm, not volume. A Palm Springs business that asks each customer, once, to vote during the December 16-30 window collects whatever those customers remember to do. A business that reminds them daily, by receipt, email list or social post, converts the same customers into fifteen returns per category. That is entirely within the program's stated rule of one vote per day per category.

The organizer's page does not print a full rules text covering outside help, paid promotion or third-party voting services, so a business considering anything beyond organic outreach should read the program's own terms on the live site before acting. What is certain is what the ballot rewards: consistent, genuine community participation across the whole voting window, and a strong showing in the October nomination round that gets the business onto the December ballot in the first place. Tactics that carry across public ballots of this kind are collected in how to get more votes online.