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

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

A Pueblo business that discovers it has been nominated usually arrives with the same questions: who is behind this ballot, is it real, and what does winning actually involve. The answers sit with the USA TODAY Network's Pueblo newspaper under Gannett, which runs the Best of Pueblo Community's Choice Awards as its annual readers-choice celebration of the top businesses and organizations across the Pueblo area.

The program lives on Your Choice Awards, the USA TODAY Network's own awards platform, at yourchoiceawards.com/pueblo. That matters for two reasons. First, the copyright line on the ballot credits USA TODAY NETWORK Ventures, so the organizer is a national media company's local operation rather than an unknown promoter. Second, the platform is distinct from CommunityVotes Pueblo, a different program on a different site that a searcher can easily confuse with this one.

The vertical is business awards in the best-of format. The ballot page states the category count and roughly 420 businesses and organizations across the program. The cycle moves through three named phases: nominations, a public voting round, and a winners announcement, with a gala reveal, a print section in the paper, and an online winners section carrying the results.

The dated facts for the Pueblo ballot

The 2026 cycle is dated on the ballot page in three lines. The nomination round ran June 1-22, 2026, described as the point where it all begins. The voting round ran August 3-17, 2026, with the page noting that after nominations, the leading companies in every category advance to the voting stage. Winners are announced October 21, 2026, once voting ends and the reveal is prepared.

On recurrence, the program is annual under the USA TODAY Network's local business awards umbrella. The confirmed edition years are 2025 and 2026, giving the Pueblo program a history a nominated business can check before investing effort. The 2027 window has not been announced yet.

The nomination phase carried a promotion of its own: the 2026 ballot tied entry into a $250 gift voucher drawing to the nomination round. What the page does not lay out in one place is the full category roster and the eligibility terms for nominees, even though the category count is stated; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

For a business, the practical reading of these dates is sequencing. June is for getting on the ballot, August is the fortnight that decides the finalists' rank, and October is when the result becomes public through the gala and the print section. A campaign that starts in September has missed the window that matters.

How a supporter votes on the Pueblo ballot today

Voting on this ballot is a straightforward public poll with a daily limit. During the voting round, August 3-17, a supporter opens yourchoiceawards.com/pueblo, finds a category, picks the Pueblo nominee they want to back, and logs the vote. The ballot states the rule directly: one vote per category per supporter per day while the round runs.

That per-category daily rule shapes everything a supporter does. One person can back a restaurant in the morning and a plumber in the afternoon, because each category takes its own daily vote. What one person cannot do is stack repeated votes on the same business in the same category on the same day. Whether the ballot asks for an email sign-in before accepting a vote is not stated on the page.

Nominations work differently. In the June window, a business or its customers submit the company into a category, and after nominations close the leading companies in every category advance. A business that misses the nomination phase cannot be voted on in August, which is why the June dates matter as much to owners as the August ones.

After the round closes, the program moves to the October 21 winners announcement, delivered through the gala, the print section, and the online winners section. Results from earlier editions stay published, so a supporter can see how past cycles resolved before deciding how hard to push in the current one.

How the Pueblo ballot sits beside its Colorado neighbours

Colorado runs several best-of business and readers-choice programs, and the Pueblo edition is the southern-Colorado member of that family. Its closest editorial neighbours include Best of the Springs to the north, and the metro titles: Best of Denver from Westword and Top of the Town from 5280.

Further afield in the state, the same format appears in Best of NOCO, Best of Summit County, and Best of the Boat in Steamboat. Every program on this list answers to a different publisher, and a vote cast in one does not count toward any of the others.

What distinguishes the Pueblo program is its host. It runs on Your Choice Awards, the USA TODAY Network's own platform, under the Pueblo Chieftain's Gannett masthead, and it is separate from CommunityVotes Pueblo, which occupies a different site with a different organizer. A business owner searching for the ballot should match the name and the platform before assuming the two are the same contest, because they are not.

The scale is also Pueblo-specific. The stated category count and roughly 420 businesses and organizations give the market a ballot sized to its own business community, not a statewide list, so a Pueblo nominee competes against local peers rather than against Front Range giants.

Strengthening support for a Pueblo nominee

A Pueblo business pushing this ballot works with two fixed facts: the voting round runs August 3-17, and each category takes one vote per supporter per day. The practical play is a daily-reminder campaign aimed at customers who already know the business, spaced across the full window rather than bunched at the end, since every day of the round accepts a fresh vote.

The organizer's page does not publish a policy on outside help or purchased support, so a business weighing that route should read the organizer's terms first and understand what the ballot permits before committing budget. General tactics that fit a daily-vote public ballot, from email lists to social prompts, are covered in the site's votes guide, and the award-votes specifics sit on the award votes page.

What no outside help changes is the sequencing: a business must be nominated in June to appear on the August ballot at all, and the winners reveal on October 21 is the only result that counts.