Best of Valley & Adams Counties (Star-News): How Voting Works & How to Win

What is Best of Valley & Adams Counties and who runs it?

The Star-News, a newspaper published in McCall, Idaho, runs the Best of Valley & Adams Counties ballot as part of its Best Of franchise on its own website. The voting page sits at bestof.cherryroad.com, the Best Of platform operated for CherryRoad Media titles, and each edition receives its own event address on that domain. Readers across Valley County and Adams County use the ballot to crown local business favorites, which places the programme in the best-of vertical rather than in sports, pageants or music.

CherryRoad Media, Inc. holds the copyright line on the Best Of pages, so this is a hometown readers' choice steered by a community masthead rather than a statewide media project. McCall anchors the ballot's home turf, and the county-wide reach written into the programme's own name means favorites can come from anywhere in either county. Voting is free, the ballot is open to the public, and the paper repeats the exercise every year.

Because the organizer hosts the ballot on infrastructure it controls, the event page is where every operational detail lands, from the category lineup to the round schedule. Anything a supporter needs comes straight from the Star-News rather than from a third-party polling vendor.

Which editions have run, and what happened in the 2025 cycle?

The ballot's confirmed editions are 2023, 2024 and 2025. The 2025 edition carried a published event timeline on the Best Of site, and that timeline is the most detailed schedule the programme has released. It listed a voting round running from October 2, 2025 through October 22, 2025, marked the round completed, and then showed a winners announcement dated December 18, 2025, after which the event appeared as complete.

That completion trail matters to anyone timing a campaign, because it shows the paper treats the round as a bounded event with a published endpoint rather than an open-ended poll.

For cycles after 2025, the pattern to expect is the same: the Star-News posts each new round's timeline on its event page when voting approaches. A detail the 2025 page leaves off is the roster of categories supporters choose from; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How does a supporter cast a vote during the round?

Voting happens on the Star-News event page itself. A supporter opens the ballot address on bestof.cherryroad.com while a round is live, moves through the categories, picks a favorite and submits a vote. The rule printed on the Best Of ballot reads: "You may vote for your favorites once per day, per email address." Read practically, a supporter with a single email address can back a favorite every day of the round, and a household with several addresses can spread its daily support across them without breaking the rule.

Nothing on the ballot asks voters to pay, and the contest is presented as a free readers' choice for the paper's coverage area. Because the Star-News hosts the ballot on its own Best Of platform instead of a third-party polling service, the layout and the vote button follow whatever the newspaper sets, and any adjustment to the cadence would show up on the event page. The event address is where the entire process plays out, with no separate app involved.

How does this ballot compare with other Idaho readers' choice contests?

The Star-News ballot sits inside a wider Idaho family of readers' choice programmes. Its named neighbours include Best of Canyon County, Best of Greater Idaho Falls, Best of Magic Valley Readers' Choice, Best of North Idaho, Boise Favorites and the Boise Area Parade of Homes. Those contests serve their own corners of the state; this one draws its electorate strictly from Valley County and Adams County.

The sharper difference is the publisher. Boise Favorites and the Parade of Homes carry metro names in their titles, while this ballot is bound to county lines and a single hometown masthead in the CherryRoad Media group. A business in the McCall area competes, in effect, only against its own county neighbours rather than a capital-city field, and that smaller electorate is exactly what makes steady daily participation visible on the leaderboard.

For supporters deciding where to spend effort, the consequence is straightforward: the same daily habit moves further in a two-county poll than it typically would in a metro-scale field, and the paper's own timeline gives everyone the same fixed runway to work within.

How can a business strengthen its support during the round?

The ballot's structure tells a campaign what to do. Since the rule grants a vote per email address per day, the support that accumulates is the kind built on reminders rather than a lone announcement: tell customers the moment the October round opens, post the event link where regulars already look, and repeat the ask on the days that follow until voting closes. A bookmark of the Star-News event page turns a well-meant intention into an actual daily vote.

Businesses weighing outside help should start from what the Star-News itself publishes, since the event page is the authority on what this ballot allows. The guide at getting more votes online walks through outreach habits that suit a daily-rule poll like this one, and the legal position on purchased support is summarised separately on this site. Whatever path a campaign takes, the fixed October window and the paper's published announcement date give it a clear finish line to plan against.