Locals' Choice 2026: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Locals' Choice 2026 is and who runs it

Locals' Choice 2026 is the Glenwood Springs Post Independent's readers' choice ballot, a best-of program from the daily newspaper serving Glenwood Springs and Garfield County in western Colorado. Local businesses compete for reader recognition across a set of categories, and the paper frames the whole exercise with a line from its own FAQ page, that in the Post Independent's Locals' Choice contest, readers have the last word.

The ballot lives on the organizer's own site, not on outside voting software. The live form sits at postindependent.com/localschoice/, on the same domain that carries the paper's news coverage of Glenwood Springs, Garfield County crime and courts, education, wolves, wildfire and the 2026 election. A supporter who lands on the ballot is therefore dealing directly with the publisher, not with an intermediary contest platform.

The masthead behind the program belongs to Swift Communications, Inc, which operates the Post Independent site. The paper also publishes section coverage under banners such as the Citizen Telegram, and its site carries entertainment, sports, preps and obituary listings alongside the contest calendar, but the Locals' Choice ballot is its own standalone program with its own dedicated page.

Program facts

The dated facts: editions, window and what is not published

Three editions of Locals' Choice are confirmed: 2023, 2024 and 2026. The 2026 edition is the live cycle, anchored to the ballot page titled Locals' Choice Ballot 2026 on the Post Independent's site. The paper's own page groups the current ballot with a past winners listing, which is how the earlier editions remain visible to readers. The program is annual in character, and the next expected cycle is 2027, but no first-run year for the program as a whole is established by the material behind this page.

What that material does not carry is any dated window. No open date, no close date and no nomination phase dates are printed anywhere in the program's published pages, and the category list for 2026 is likewise absent from every page this program is built from. The 2026 window dates and the full category roster are simply not published in the material for this program; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

One dated rule does stand, and it comes from the paper's own FAQ page: voting is limited to one vote in each category per person per day. That line is the only per-supporter rule the Post Independent publishes for the program, and it is the single figure a supporter can plan around. Everything else about the calendar, including whether the 2026 ballot runs one phase or several, is a matter for the live page and the paper's news coverage.

How a supporter votes on the Post Independent's ballot today

Backing a business here is a plain public vote on a web form. A supporter opens the Locals' Choice page at postindependent.com/localschoice/, scrolls the ballot's category fields, and marks a local business in each category where they hold a genuine preference, then submits the form. No login, fee or ticketed event stands between the reader and the ballot as far as the program's own pages describe it, and the published format has no paid voting element.

The published rule shapes how that visit works: voting is limited to one vote in each category per person per day. In practice this means a supporter can back one business in every category on a single visit, return the next calendar day, and repeat. The daily rhythm, not a single burst, is the mechanic the Post Independent's own rule builds in, and businesses that mobilize customers understand the window only pays off across repeated daily visits.

The ballot page also serves as the program's archive. The current 2026 form sits alongside a past winners area, so a reader who wants to see which Glenwood Springs and Garfield County businesses earlier editions recognized can do it on the same URL. Because the paper runs the form on its own domain, the ballot's behavior, its instructions and any verification it applies are set entirely by the Post Independent, and the live page is the final word on what a supporter may do.

How this ballot sits beside Colorado's other best-of programs

Colorado has a dense field of readers' choice ballots, and Locals' Choice occupies a distinct lane in it. The program answers to the Glenwood Springs Post Independent and serves Glenwood Springs and Garfield County on the western slope, a market none of the state's metro ballots cover. Its nearest siblings are all front range or mountain programs, each run by a different publisher with its own rules and its own calendar.

The sibling set includes Top of the Town from 5280, Best of Denver from the Westword, Best of NOCO, Best of the Springs from the Gazette, Best of Summit County, and Best of the Boat in Steamboat. A supporter can browse each of these on this site through its own program page, and each program's dates, categories and rules belong to its own publisher alone.

What separates the Post Independent's ballot from that field is scale of place rather than scale of audience. Where the Denver ballots compete across a metro area, Locals' Choice is built around a single resort-corridor community and the businesses its readers actually use day to day, which is why the paper brands it around locals rather than visitors. For a Garfield County business, recognition here lands with the neighbors who walk through the door, not with a statewide or national panel. A vote cast in one program never transfers to another, so businesses in overlapping markets have to court each ballot on its own terms.

Strengthening support for a business on the Locals' Choice ballot

The Post Independent's published rule, one vote in each category per person per day, dictates the shape of any serious push for a Garfield County business. A customer who votes once and forgets is worth one category vote; a customer who bookmarks the ballot and returns daily is worth the whole window. That makes reminders, signage and follow-up messages the core organic tactics, aimed at building a daily habit rather than a one-time splash.

Supporters who want tactics beyond the daily return can read the how to get more votes online guide, which covers outreach that fits daily-capped ballots like this one. Readers who are weighing purchased support for the Locals' Choice ballot should start from the paper's own published limit and judge any outside help against it, since the organizer's rule is the only constraint that carries consequences on this program.