Aspen Times Best of Aspen Snowmass Basalt: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Aspen Times Best of Aspen Snowmass Basalt actually is

The Aspen Times runs this ballot at aspentimes.com as one combined program covering three towns rather than three separate city votes. The paper's own site line states it plainly: "Serving Aspen, Basalt, and Snowmass Village, CO." A business in any of the three competes under a single shared "Best of Aspen, Snowmass, Basalt" title each year.

Those last two rows deserve a plain reading: nothing spells out which categories exist, and nothing sets a limit on how often one supporter may vote. Treat that gap as unsettled rather than borrowing an answer from a different Colorado paper's own best-of program; confirm on the live ballot each cycle instead.

Five confirmed editions, and one dated result to go on

Five editions carry this ballot forward: 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, every one of them run by The Aspen Times at aspentimes.com. That five-year span outlasts several other Colorado best-of ballots covered alongside it here, even though it doesn't come with an exact nomination or voting-window date for whatever cycle is live today.

The single cycle with a specific date attached is 2023. Its page put the situation in exactly these words: "VOTING IS COMPLETE. Winners will be announced December 1." Voting had already ended by that point, leaving only the results announcement still ahead. No other confirmed edition carries a matching date, so stretching December 1 into a standing annual rule would claim more certainty than the page itself offers.

A business planning around a future edition should weigh that gap directly. Confirm on the live ballot each cycle for the nomination window, the voting window and the results date that actually govern the year in question, instead of assuming 2023's calendar simply repeats.

Where this ballot sits among Colorado's other best-of programs

The Aspen Times' ballot is one of several Colorado best-of programs indexed on this site, each running under its own name, its own publisher and its own results.

None of these six settles its winners on the same page as Aspen Times Best of Aspen Snowmass Basalt, and none shares its judges. Winning one says nothing about standing in another, so a business entering several of them at once is really managing several unrelated campaigns, each with its own deadline and its own rulebook.

Building support around a confirmed run, not a guessed calendar

Five confirmed editions give a business more to point back to here than a brand-new program would, even without an exact current-cycle calendar in hand. The practical move is asking real past customers directly to visit aspentimes.com and cast a vote, then following up with them again rather than making one attempt close to whatever deadline eventually appears.

That approach doesn't change once the current cycle's rules finally surface, whether they turn out capped, uncapped, or never published at all. Fake or automated activity is the kind of shortcut that can cost a program its whole entry, and a five-edition history doesn't buy immunity from that risk any more than a first-year program would get. Before spending real money chasing an Aspen, Snowmass or Basalt nomination, is buying votes legal lays out what separates a defensible campaign from a reckless one. Buying votes online covers how a paid outreach push generally works for a nominate-and-vote ballot, and award-vote campaign planning walks through the same readers'-choice mechanics from a different angle.