PSLinLights Home Outdoor Decorating Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the PSLinLights contest is and who runs it

The PSLinLights Home Outdoor Decorating Contest is a residential holiday decorating competition run by the City of Port St. Lucie, a municipality in Florida. It is not a media readers' poll and not a product of any outside voting service: the ballot lives on the city's own website, at cityofpsl.com, under the Communications and Community Engagement section. The city frames the program with a simple call to action, inviting residents to hang the wreath, untangle the lights and pull out the inflatables.

In classification terms this page treats the program as a best-of style public vote, but its subject is homes rather than businesses. Entries are outdoor yard displays, and the page names display elements such as pixels and projection screens among the features a decorated home might include. The city's address for the program is 121 SW Port St. Lucie Blvd., Port St. Lucie, FL 34984.

Facts at a glance

Because the organizer is the government of the city where entrants live, the program's rules come from the same page that carries the ballot, which makes it unusually easy to check a rule before relying on it.

The dated record for the 2025-2026 cycle

The city's own page dates the current cycle precisely. The tenth-annual PSLinLights Holiday Lights and Outdoor Yard Decorating Contest begins Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025 and runs through Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, which is the stretch when displays go up and stay lit. Voting follows the displays: an online voting link appears on the contest webpage on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026 and remains through Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, a three-day public vote.

On recurrence, the page carries two kinds of evidence. It calls the 2025-2026 cycle the tenth-annual edition, and it announces the winners of the 2025 PSLinLights Home Decorating Contest, including a first place in the New Kid on the Block grouping, once votes had been counted. The confirmed edition years carried for this program are 2025 and 2026, and 2027 is the year a following cycle would fall due.

Beyond those windows, the page prints no day-level schedule, no full category roster, and no judging breakdown for the 2026 ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The truncated judging reference on the page suggests judging follows the vote, but the city has not published how the two combine.

For planning purposes, the shape is stable: decorate from late November, keep the display up through early January, and expect the vote in the first full week of the year.

How a supporter votes in PSLinLights

The mechanic is deliberately simple. During the voting window, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026 through Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, an online voting link appears on the contest webpage itself. A supporter opens the city's contest page, follows that link, and casts a ballot for a decorated home. There is no separate platform to join and no account step named on the page.

The one printed constraint matters more than any technique: one vote per household. That rule means a supporter cannot return day after day to vote again, which is unusual among public-vote programs and changes what effective support looks like. Where a daily-vote contest rewards reminders and repeat visits, this ballot rewards a household reaching a decision and a neighborhood turning out once.

Entries themselves are outdoor displays, and the page points to features like pixels and projection screens as the kind of elements a yard might showcase. A supporter comparing entries during the three-day window is effectively judging light craft, so displays that read clearly from the street have an obvious advantage.

After the window closes on Jan. 8, 2026, results follow on the same page, as the 2025 winner announcement shows. The city has not published a results date for the 2026 cycle.

How PSLinLights sits beside other Florida public votes

Most public-vote programs covered for Florida are media readers' polls: the Best of Florida Awards, the Best of Miami Readers' Poll, Best of Orlando, Best of Tallahassee, Best of the Bay and Best in Destin. PSLinLights is different in three ways that matter to a supporter or an entrant.

First, the organizer is a city government rather than a publisher, so the rules, the ballot and the results all live on one municipal page. Second, the subject is homes, not businesses, which means the competitive field is neighbors rather than commercial categories. Third, the vote rule is one vote per household, not a daily return, so the campaign dynamics differ from every readers' poll on the list above.

The market is also narrower. Where a statewide or metro poll draws from a whole region, PSLinLights is addressed to Port St. Lucie residents, and the display window is tied to the holiday season rather than a business calendar year. Someone following several Florida ballots will find this one of the shortest voting windows to plan around, and the one where a single household's single vote carries the most weight per person.

Strengthening support within the city's rules

Because the ballot allows one vote per household, the only lever an entrant controls is how many households know about the entry before Jan. 6, 2026. Practical steps follow from the city's own published facts: register or qualify during the entry window that closes Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, make the display visible from the street with the elements the city highlights, such as pixels and projection screens, and let neighbors know the voting dates. A display that photographs well helps supporters share it during the short window.

The city's page prints no policy on outside help or organized voting pushes for this contest, and it also prints no per-household exception to the one-vote rule. Anything that pressures the rule sits against the printed terms, and the city has not published how it would treat irregular activity. The safest reading is that this is a neighbor-to- neighbor vote, and support that works is support that turns out real households once each. For tactics that fit a fixed, low-frequency ballot like this one, see our guide to getting more votes online.