2026 Riverbend & Madison County Best of the Best: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Riverbend and Madison County Best of the Best Is

The 2026 Riverbend and Madison County Best of the Best is a public-vote recognition ballot for local businesses and community favorites, organized by The Telegraph, a newspaper based in Alton, Illinois. The publication covers Bethalto and surrounding communities throughout Madison County, and the ballot draws its name from that coverage region. The program sits in the best-of vertical, where readers vote to single out their preferred businesses, services and community figures.

The Telegraph hosts the ballot on Second Street, a platform built for publisher contests and community ballots. The ballot is configured as a NominationAndVotingBallot, meaning the promotion combines a nomination round and a voting round. Readers first put forward candidates in each category during a September nomination window, then return to cast votes among the nominees as the voting phase progresses through October.

The 2026 edition continues a run on Second Street that began in 2022. The Telegraph also operates sweepstakes and photo promotions on the same platform account, but the Best of the Best is the paper's dedicated business recognition ballot and its most visible annual community program.

Confirmed Editions and the 2026 Timeline

The Riverbend and Madison County Best of the Best has confirmed editions in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. The Telegraph describes the program as an annual contest in its own coverage, and the platform listing shows a promotion for each of those years under the same organizer account on Second Street.

For the 2026 cycle, the voting window runs from September 10 through October 29. The ballot page carries a status of upcoming on the Second Street platform as of mid-September 2026, meaning the promotion is scheduled and accessible but has not yet closed. The nomination round opens on Thursday, September 10 and runs through Saturday, September 19, according to The Telegraph's own announcement. That announcement describes the nomination phase as spanning business and community members across the contest's categories.

The Telegraph has not published a vote cap, a rule on how frequently a single supporter may cast a vote, or eligibility requirements for the 2026 ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Each prior edition has followed the same broad pattern of a September nomination round followed by a voting phase extending into October. Prior editions are hosted on the same Second Street platform under their own URLs, one for each year from 2022 through 2025.

How to Participate in the 2026 Vote

A supporter who wants to participate in the 2026 Riverbend and Madison County Best of the Best starts by visiting the ballot page on Second Street. The ballot URL for the current cycle directs to a nomination and voting interface where categories are listed and supporters can nominate or select their picks.

During the nomination phase from September 10 through September 19, a supporter submits the name of a favorite business, organization or individual in an open category. Once the voting phase is active, the supporter returns to the same page and casts a vote in each category they care about. The ballot closes on October 29, 2026.

The Telegraph promotes the ballot through its own coverage on thetelegraph.com, where readers can find links to the Best of the Best voting pages. A supporter who lands on the newspaper's site can navigate to the ballot from there, or type the Second Street address directly into a browser.

What the ballot page does not spell out in advance is whether a supporter can vote once per day, once per category per day, or an unlimited number of times. The organizer has not published a per-voter voting rule for this cycle. A supporter should follow whatever instructions the live ballot presents when the voting phase opens.

How This Ballot Compares to Other Illinois Programs

Illinois hosts several public-vote recognition programs at different geographic levels, and the Riverbend and Madison County Best of the Best occupies a distinct niche among them. Where the Best of Chicago from the Chicago Reader covers a major metropolitan area and CommunityVotes Peoria IL and CommunityVotes Rockford serve individual cities downstate, this ballot is anchored to a county-level readership around Alton and Bethalto.

The BAGI Parade of Homes People's Choice and the Chicago Style Weddings Best Of are narrower in scope, each focused on a single industry or event. The Sauk Valley Favorites ballot, run in the Sterling area, is the closest structural comparison, since both are small-market ballots covering a regional community rather than a large city.

What makes the Riverbend and Madison County ballot different is its combination of a nomination phase and a voting phase on Second Street. Some Illinois ballots open directly to voting without a nomination round. This program asks supporters to first put forward candidates in September before the voting phase begins, which means a business that wants to appear on the final ballot needs supporters to nominate it during the early window, not just vote for it later.

For a business owner deciding where to focus outreach, the practical implication is that this ballot rewards early engagement in a way that is common to award-style ballots. A supporter base that shows up in the first ten days of September puts a business on the ballot; one that waits until October may find the nomination window has already closed.