Star-Advertiser Hawaii's Best: How Voting Works & How to Win

Two domains, one Star-Advertiser program, and a 2026 ballot that's already closed

forms.oahupublications.com. That's not a typo, and it isn't the same site as nonstophawaii.com/hawaiisbest/, where the actual voting happens. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser runs its Hawaii's Best readers-choice awards across two separate Oahu Publications properties: one page takes the nomination, a different page runs the ballot. A business owner who bookmarks only one of the two is missing half the process.

The second fact that matters right now: as of this writing, 2026 voting is closed. Anyone landing here mid-year is either checking a claim from the last round or scouting the mechanics ahead of the next one, and both uses deserve a straight answer rather than a guess dressed up as a date.

No vote totals, no announced winners, and no fixed reopening date accompany those two facts. Naming that gap outright beats filling it with a guess born from a template. The only place to check a live nomination window, a category list, or a per-day cap is nonstophawaii.com/hawaiisbest/ itself, read on the day it actually matters. For the state's other major readers-choice program, see the Best of Hawaii guide, which runs on entirely different infrastructure.

Hawaii's Best isn't the state's only readers-choice ballot, and the mechanics don't match

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser isn't the only publisher running a Hawaii readers-choice program. HAWAIʻI Magazine operates Best of Hawaii at vote.hawaiimagazine.com, a separate statewide ballot that splits into island-specific lanes, including a dedicated Big Island Readers' Choice ballot. Two different organizers, two different domains, two different vote structures, both loosely called "Hawaii's best" in everyday conversation.

Confusing the two costs a campaign real reach. A supporter told simply to "vote for us on Hawaii's best" has no way to know which of two unrelated programs, with unrelated URLs, that even refers to. Naming the organizer, Star-Advertiser or HAWAIʻI Magazine, in the actual outreach message removes that ambiguity in one sentence.

Why the two-domain structure is the detail worth remembering

Most readers-choice programs run nomination and voting on the same page, or at least the same domain. Hawaii's Best splits them across forms.oahupublications.com and nonstophawaii.com, both owned by the same parent company but functionally two separate stops. A campaign that shares only the nomination link, once nominations close, is sharing a dead end.

The nomination-to-vote pipeline, and what genuinely isn't published about it

Two steps, two sites, and a real gap in the middle where a business has to pay attention. Step one is forms.oahupublications.com, the nomination stage. Step two is nonstophawaii.com/hawaiisbest/, where the ballot lives once a nomination clears. Nothing public describes how long that gap typically runs.

That last row matters more than it looks. Plenty of contest guides guess at a per-day cap or invent a category list just to look thorough. This one won't. Guessing wrong on a business's actual campaign timeline does more damage than admitting a limit isn't public, so treat nonstophawaii.com/hawaiisbest/ as the only authority on the live rules, not a screenshot from a prior year or a reseller's recycled summary.

One structural note worth flagging: because Oahu Publications runs the nomination form, it's the parent company, not the Star-Advertiser masthead directly, handling that first step. A business confused about who to contact with a nomination question is better served searching Oahu Publications' own channels than the newsroom.

Hawaii's Best draws on statewide readership, not one island's audience

"Hawaii's Best," not "Oʻahu's Best" or "Honolulu's Best." The name is the clearest signal of scope here, since no island-by-island breakdown is published the way HAWAIʻI Magazine runs one. A Maui business and a Kailua-Kona business compete, as far as the confirmed record shows, on the same footing as a Honolulu business, all folded into one statewide program rather than routed into a regional lane.

That matters for how a campaign gets built. Oʻahu carries the bulk of the state's population and sits on the Star-Advertiser's own home turf, so a Honolulu business starts with a built-in local-readership edge that a Big Island or Kauai business doesn't automatically get from the same paper. Neither fact is spelled out anywhere as an official weighting; it's simply how a single statewide ballot tends to play out when one island holds most of the readership.

What a business outside Oʻahu should actually do about that

Lean on the customer list that already exists rather than assume the Star-Advertiser's own reach will carry a Maui or Kauai nomination equally. A tour operator in Kihei or a restaurant in Hilo gets more out of a direct email to past guests than out of hoping the newspaper's general readership notices a name it doesn't already recognize. The mechanic is statewide. The votes still come from people who already know the business.

Running an honest push for a Hawaii's Best nomination

Start with the correct link, not a general mention. "Nominate us for Hawaii's Best" with no URL sends a supporter to guess between two sites: forms.oahupublications.com for the nomination, nonstophawaii.com/hawaiisbest/ for the vote itself. Share whichever one actually applies to the stage the campaign is in, and swap the message once the process moves from nomination to voting.

Since 2026 voting has already closed, the honest move for a business reading this now is preparation, not a live push. Save the confirmed URLs, watch nonstophawaii.com/hawaiisbest/ for the next cycle's opening, and build the customer list a future nomination will actually need. A campaign assembled the week a ballot opens tends to underperform one built months ahead of it.

Fake accounts, scripted votes, or a purchased-bot push put a real business's name next to a term, "Hawaii's Best," that carries genuine local recognition. That risk applies to any readers-choice program covered on this site; see is buying votes legal before spending any budget on outreach here. What holds up is ordinary and real: an email list, a mention at checkout, a social post that names the exact program and, once results are public, the exact year and category. For the mechanics behind readers-choice and award-style campaigns generally, award-vote campaign planning and the online contest votes overview cover ground that applies here. Hawaii runs other honors on a similar public-vote basis: the Hawaii High School Athlete of the Week and Hawaii High School Player of the Year programs, both entirely separate from this business award, and the Hawaii contest hub tracks what else is currently active statewide.