Best of Hall: How Voting Works & How to Win

Confirmed editions since 2017: what Best of Hall's own history shows

Confirmed editions of Best of Hall run 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026, with the current Best of Hall 2027 listing now open. A gap shows up between 2021 and 2023 in the platform's own listing. Archived pages touch 2022 as well. That year simply never produced a confirmed edition of its own. Few Second Street markets in Georgia carry a run this long without a rebrand or a change of ownership somewhere along the way.

The 2027 edition, despite its name, actually opens and closes inside 2026: nominations and voting run October 1 through November 30, 2026, at gainesvilletimes.secondstreetapp.com. The Gainesville Times names each Best of Hall edition for the year following its own voting window, a pattern this ballot has followed since at least 2017.

Treat the last two rows as open questions rather than assumptions carried over from an earlier year. Confirm on the live ballot each cycle, since even a decade-long program can quietly change its own category structure between editions.

A Hall County address, not one of Georgia's other regional polls

Georgia runs several separate "best of" ballots, each tied to its own publisher and its own coverage area, and Best of Hall settles only Hall County's own results. Confusing it with a neighboring county's ballot means comparing businesses that were never actually on the same ballot together.

What that separation means for a nomination push right now

A search for "Georgia best of awards" surfaces all seven of these programs about equally, none of which settle a Hall County business's own standing except gainesvilletimes.secondstreetapp.com itself. October 1 through November 30, 2026 is the window that matters here; exactly how Best of Hall groups its own nominees stays unpublished past that stretch, and no other Georgia publisher's page will ever spell it out instead.

Gainesville and the rest of Hall County

Gainesville, the Hall County seat, sits along the shore of Lake Lanier in northeast Georgia. Oakwood and Flowery Branch, both inside the same county, sit a short drive south along the lake's edge, a few miles from Gainesville's own downtown core.

Nothing the Gainesville Times has published about Best of Hall draws a boundary at Gainesville's own city limits, and plenty of Oakwood and Flowery Branch residents work and shop in Gainesville day to day, crossing back and forth for groceries, schools, and weekend errands alike. A Hall County business outside Gainesville proper has no obvious reason to assume Best of Hall doesn't reach it too.

Building a push around confirmed editions dating to 2017

A long run of confirmed editions gives a Hall County business more to study than a brand-new ballot would: which categories tend to recur, roughly when nominations open each fall, and how long the Gainesville Times typically leaves a window running. None of that settles what this specific edition's own rulebook looks like; the category structure and any per-voter limit remain a live-ballot question each year regardless of how long Best of Hall has run.

A long-running program earns its standing the same way a first-year one does: genuine Hall County customers coming back before the window shuts, not a single burst of activity timed to November 30 itself. Second Street's own fraud screening treats a well-established market no differently than a brand-new one, so a long confirmed run buys a business zero cover if its own campaign gets flagged. Is buying votes legal spells out that boundary clearly, and award-vote campaign planning walks through the mechanics of a readers'-choice push shaped like this one.