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

One combined ballot, not two separate stages

Best of North State Community's Choice Awards runs nominating and voting on a single page rather than splitting the two into separate windows the way some other SecondStreet markets do. The 2026 edition opened July 9 and runs through October 1, 2026, and as of September 2026 that window is still active.

Redding, California's daily newspaper hosts the ballot on the SecondStreet platform at redding.gannettcontests.com. Four editions are confirmed on that platform, running from 2023 straight through 2026, and the earliest of those opened July 3, 2023, just days off this year's July 9 start. Beyond the confirmed window, the published detail goes quiet: no category roster, no per-voter cap, no separate closing date for a distinct voting stage.

Four straight years is enough of a consistent pattern to call this an established annual fixture for Redding, rather than a program still finding its footing. Whatever comes after October 1 stays unconfirmed until it actually posts; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

A regional newspaper ballot, sitting apart from Southern California's own polls

"North State" is the program's own name for the Redding-based region it covers, a different stretch of California entirely from where several other "best of" ballots below operate. None of those programs share a judging panel, a results page, or a category list with this North State ballot.

What that distance means for a Redding-area nomination push

A search for "best of north state" can just as easily surface an outdated page from a prior year, a different Gannett market entirely, or one of the six Southern and Central California programs above, none of which register a vote for this North State ballot. redding.gannettcontests.com is the one address a North State business should be pointing supporters toward directly, since a strong result on any of the other six carries zero weight here.

Redding and Shasta County's own footprint in this ballot

Redding is the seat of Shasta County and the organizing base for the daily newspaper running this ballot. The Best of North State name reaches beyond Redding's own city limits toward the wider North State region the paper covers, without a published boundary spelling out exactly how far that stretches.

This same newspaper keeps its SecondStreet account active well past this one ballot. The platform also lists a Shasta Family YMCA Athlete of the Week photo gallery running on the same account, a pattern that points to a newsroom running an ongoing reader-engagement program rather than a single once-a-year page that otherwise sits untouched.

None of that changes what actually decides Best of North State results: the ballot itself, confirmed only through October 1, 2026 for this cycle. A category list, an eligibility rule, or a per-voter cap tied to Redding or Shasta County specifically isn't published anywhere reviewed here; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Working inside four confirmed editions, not a guess

Four confirmed editions give a North State business a real pattern to plan around: an opening date that lands consistently in early-to-mid July, and a closing date at the start of October. Lining up which actual customers will click through to redding.gannettcontests.com before October 1, and asking them more than once across that window, fits the pattern this ballot has already shown across 2023 through 2026.

Real supporters, asked directly and repeatedly, are what actually moves a combined nominate-and-vote ballot like this one, regardless of whatever unpublished rule eventually surfaces on vote limits. Gannett's SecondStreet platform screens every market it hosts for irregular activity, and a flag against a four-edition program threatens a longer confirmed history than a newer ballot would risk losing. is buying votes legal draws the line between a legitimate push and a risky one, and buying votes online walks through what a paid-help campaign resembles for a combined nominate-and-vote format like this one. Award-vote campaign planning is built specifically around this readers'-choice shape.