Brevard Community's Choice Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

FLORIDA TODAY's own ballot for all of Brevard County

FLORIDA TODAY, the daily paper headquartered in Melbourne, organizes the Brevard Community's Choice Awards on floridatoday.gannettcontests.com. Unlike a single-city ballot, this one is built around Brevard County as a whole, a stretch of Florida's east coast running from Titusville in the north down through Cocoa, Rockledge, Merritt Island, Melbourne, Satellite Beach and Palm Bay. Four editions are confirmed so far: 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026.

Brevard County shares its coastline with Kennedy Space Center, and FLORIDA TODAY's own coverage has long stretched across that same footprint, well past any single downtown. The Brevard Community's Choice Awards sits inside the best-of readers'-choice vertical, a public nomination-and-voting format rather than a juried competition.

How many categories run, and how often one person may vote, is not stated; confirm on the live ballot each cycle before treating either as settled.

A May window already behind it

As of September 2026, the Brevard ballot's 2026 window is closed. It opened May 11 and ran through May 26, the earliest closing date of any FLORIDA TODAY cycle confirmed so far. Four straight years, 2023 through 2026, suggest the paper keeps this ballot on an annual footing, though no exact 2027 date is posted yet.

A business or reader arriving now sees a closed page, not a live one. floridatoday.gannettcontests.com will show whatever date FLORIDA TODAY sets next; this year's May calendar guarantees nothing about the one that follows. Treat a printed reference to any earlier month as a description of what already happened, not a promise about what comes next.

Florida runs several other well-known best-of ballots with no tie to Brevard's own results, worth sorting out before assuming any of them speaks for FLORIDA TODAY's own tally. A county-wide readers'-choice ballot draws attention from outside Brevard too, which makes the mix-up more likely here than on a single-city program.

Distinct from Miami, Orlando, Tallahassee, Tampa Bay and Boynton Beach's own polls

Florida hosts more locally-run best-of ballots than most states, and FLORIDA TODAY's own Brevard program answers to nobody but itself.

Miami sits well south of Brevard, Orlando inland to the northwest, Tallahassee clear across the state in the panhandle, and Tampa Bay on Florida's gulf coast; none of those four publishers touch FLORIDA TODAY's own count. Boynton Beach runs its own ballot further south still, through the separate CommunityVotes network rather than Second Street. Best of Florida Awards folds in businesses from every corner of the state under one separate masthead, so a strong Brevard showing there settles nothing without its own entry.

Why a casual search still gets confusing

A phrase like "best of Brevard" or "Florida readers choice" can just as easily return any of the six programs above, an old page from a prior FLORIDA TODAY cycle, or the current one. floridatoday.gannettcontests.com is the address that actually decides this exact ballot.

Building support across a county-wide ballot

A four-edition history covering an entire county gives a Brevard business a wider audience to reach than a single-city ballot would, but it also means real customers are spread across several towns rather than one downtown strip. Watching floridatoday.gannettcontests.com directly for the next opening beats guessing from this year's May calendar.

FLORIDA TODAY runs on the same Second Street software Gannett uses across its other papers, and its screening for irregular activity treats a four-edition county-wide ballot no differently than a first-year one. Supporters who actually patronize the business, asked more than once across the window, carry more weight under that kind of review than any shortcut.

A nomination is one outcome; a win is a separate one FLORIDA TODAY alone certifies once its process wraps up. is buying votes legal sets out where a legitimate push stops and a riskier one begins. Buying votes online covers what paid outside help typically involves for a countywide readers'-choice ballot like this one, and award-vote campaign planning breaks down the specific moves that suit a county-wide push like Brevard's own.