Best of Summit County: How Voting Works & How to Win

Four towns, one ballot, and a results night that waits until October

Fifteen days. That's roughly the window Summit Daily News gave voters in 2025, July 18 through August 1, to work through nearly 200 categories covering Breckenridge, Frisco, Silverthorne, Dillon, and Keystone. Then nothing happens publicly for two months. Winners don't get announced online the day the ballot closes; they're revealed at an event each October in Silverthorne, months after most of that summer's tourist traffic has already left.

Summit Daily News runs the whole thing as one county-wide program rather than splitting it town by town, which matters on the I-70 corridor. Drive from Silverthorne to Breckenridge and you're looking at maybe twenty-five minutes. The paper treats that stretch as a single reading market, and the ballot reflects it.

That October gap is worth sitting with. A ballot that closes in August and doesn't confirm winners until October gives a business two full months where "we're a finalist" is the only honest thing left to say. See the Colorado contest hub for how this compares to the state's other statewide and regional readers-choice programs, including sports fan-vote ballots like Colorado High School Athlete of the Week, which runs on a weekly cycle instead of an annual one.

A ski-resort economy votes differently than a year-round suburb

Summit County isn't a typical county government seat with one main employer and a stable population count. It's four ski towns and a reservoir town strung along I-70, where a large share of the workforce turns over every season and a meaningful chunk of the housing stock belongs to people who live somewhere else most of the year.

The July window lands during the busiest weeks, not the quietest

Most local best-of ballots run in a slower season to give year-round residents time to vote without competing against tourist traffic. Best of Summit County does the opposite. The July 18-August 1 window sits inside peak summer, when seasonal staff are working double shifts and second-home owners are more likely to be up from Denver or Front Range cities than any other stretch of the year. That timing shapes who's actually available to click a ballot.

No public town-by-town category split exists on the ballot itself. A Frisco brewery and a Dillon brewery, if both fit the same category label, most likely compete on one shared list rather than two separate ones. Category fit decides who's in the running far more than which of the five towns holds the storefront.

Colorado's ski corridor isn't the only mountain economy running this kind of ballot. Best of Jackson Hole pulls a similar mix of seasonal workers and second-home owners into a valley-wide vote, though Buckrail's program there names gold, silver, and bronze winners instead of Summit Daily News' single-winner-per-category format.

No per-year total published, so the multi-year figure is the only honest one

Summit Daily News has not broken out a confirmed vote count for any single year of Best of Summit County. What is confirmed is the aggregate: hundreds of thousands of votes across a program that has run for more than a decade. Dividing that evenly across every past cycle and presenting the result as a specific year's total would be a guess dressed up as a fact, and it isn't one this guide is willing to make.

Before Summit Daily News confirms a result, a business has two honest verbs to use: "nominated" or "finalist" if the ballot has a shortlist stage, and "vote for us" once voting is live. Neither claims a placement that hasn't been awarded, which matters in a program old enough that a competitor down the block in Breckenridge may already be citing a win from several Octobers back.

For the underlying standard behind any legitimate campaign push, see what a real vote actually means, and for the general mechanics behind a nominate-and-vote structure like this one, how online contest votes work covers ground that applies here too.

Building a campaign around a corridor, not a single storefront

A business new to Best of Summit County often treats the ballot the way it would a single-city poll, one push, one town, done. That undersells both the geography and the calendar. Five towns and a fifteen-day window mean timing the ask matters as much as picking the right category.

A lodging or dining business serving guests from outside the county, not just locals, has a real edge here. Past guests who stayed in Breckenridge or skied at Keystone can vote from wherever they live year-round, which is a different reach pattern than a suburban best-of ballot voted almost entirely by year-round neighbors. The restaurant vote campaign guide covers pacing reminders across a multi-week window like this one, a founder-facing outfitter or lodge where a named owner drives repeat trust may get more from the business of the year campaign framework, and any Summit County business running a general awards-style push can start from the broader award voting overview.