Telegraph Holiday Bazaar: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Telegraph Holiday Bazaar and who runs it?

The Telegraph Holiday Bazaar is a public-vote ballot in the best-of mould that The Telegraph, the daily newspaper of Alton, Illinois, presents on its own Second Street balloting hub at telegraph.secondstreetapp.com. The paper describes itself as passionate and committed to its role as the watchdog and trusted source of news, entertainment and advertising for the Alton community and the Riverbend region of Madison, Jersey, Calhoun, Macoupin and Greene counties, and the bazaar sits squarely inside that self-image: a seasonal invitation for readers to champion local businesses they rate highly.

On the Second Street registry the promotion is typed as a Ballot/VotingBallot, a straight voting ballot with no separate nomination stage, which sets it apart from some of the paper's other reader competitions. The listing carries the title 2025 Holiday Bazaar, while the headline on the ballot page itself spells the name Holiday Bazzar, a quirk worth remembering when searching. Because everything runs under the paper's brand on a subdomain it controls, questions about categories, judging or prizes belong to The Telegraph rather than to Second Street, which supplies the voting machinery beneath the page. For a reader in Bethalto or anywhere else in Madison County, the ballot reads as an extension of the same local coverage the paper prints every week. Nothing about the arrangement hands the vote to an external polling brand; the address, the branding and the outcome all stay with the newspaper.

Identifying facts at a glance

When did the bazaar ballot run, and what did The Telegraph leave unstated?

Just one Holiday Bazaar run shows up on the paper's Second Street hub, the 2025 edition, and its voting window stretched from December 5 to December 27, 2025. Both endpoints fall inside December, which suits the holiday theme, and the ballot is now closed, so the address persists as a web page that no longer accepts votes. Among the promotions registered on telegraph.secondstreetapp.com, the bazaar appears a single time, tied to those dates, with no earlier or later edition beside it.

This is the first confirmed edition; whether it returns next year is not yet published; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Further blanks deserve plain language. Nothing in the published material names the bazaar's categories or sets a ceiling on how many times a person could vote; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The Telegraph has likewise announced no month and no year for a future bazaar, so a supporter hoping to take part again has no date to circle. For a business owner weighing whether to plan around the programme, the honest position is that a single December run is proven and everything beyond it is anticipation.

Anyone who wants certainty about a coming edition should follow the paper's own channels rather than rumour, because the hub's promotion lineup shifts as the newspaper adds sweepstakes, photo features and ballots through the year, and a new bazaar would surface there first.

How does a supporter vote in the Telegraph Holiday Bazaar?

Voting in the Telegraph Holiday Bazaar is a browser task. When The Telegraph opens a window, a supporter goes to the ballot's address on telegraph.secondstreetapp.com, looks over the categories and the local entrants shown there, marks a favourite in each category the page presents, and sends the picks through the form on the page. No download, no special software and no trip to the newspaper office is involved; the ballot is wherever the link points that season.

Details the published material leaves open matter to anyone planning a vote. The material describes no login requirement, no account creation and no device restrictions, so the working assumption is that a normal browser session on a phone or a computer reaches the ballot. Any cadence rules the paper attaches to the contest appear beside the entries themselves, so a supporter should read them before marking picks. What the page does after submission, whether a confirmation screen or a running tally, is also not described in the published material.

One practical point dominates right now: the 2025 ballot is closed, so there is nothing to click today. The useful move is preparation. A business that expects to appear in a future bazaar can line up its customers, staff and social followers in advance, and this guide to winning more votes online walks through the honest version of that work. When the paper posts a new window, the same routine applies: arrive early, read the rules printed beside the entries, and vote inside the posted dates.

Where does the bazaar sit among The Telegraph's other ballots and neighbouring Illinois programmes?

The Telegraph runs a crowded promotional calendar on the same Second Street hub, and the bazaar is a single entry in a lineup that also includes sweepstakes drawings and a Mother's Day photo feature alongside its editorial ballots. Sweepstakes differ in kind, since they put entrants forward for prizes while a ballot lets readers decide the outcome, which makes the bazaar and the Riverbend ballot the reader-decision events among them. The closest relative is the 2026 Riverbend & Madison County Best of the Best, another Telegraph ballot, and the pair differ in telling ways. The Riverbend edition is formatted as a nomination-and-voting ballot, meaning readers nominate first and vote later, and its 2026 window stretched from September 10 to October 29. The bazaar skipped nominations entirely and lived inside a tight December span.

Beyond the paper, Illinois readers who follow community-choice voting have several neighbouring programmes covered on this site, among them the People's Choice ballot for BAGI's Parade of Homes, Sauk Valley Favorites serving Sterling, the Chicago Reader's Best of Chicago, Chicago Style Weddings Best Of, and the CommunityVotes contests in Peoria and Rockford. Against that field the bazaar's distinguishing traits are its single-newspaper branding, its business-facing subject matter and its December placement, which none of the others share.

The Telegraph's ballots side by side

How can a backer strengthen a campaign in the Holiday Bazaar?

A December ballot rewards early organisation. The 2025 bazaar gave supporters a short span in which to act, so a business hoping to figure prominently in any future edition should treat the announcement as a starting gun rather than an afterthought: brief the staff, ask regular customers directly, and hand the ballot's web address to the regulars who already back the shop. Personal asks outperform generic posts, photographs and stories about the business give supporters something concrete to pass along, and reminders in the closing days catch the voters who meant to take part and forgot.

The Telegraph has published no policy on outside assistance for this ballot, so anyone considering purchased support should weigh it against whatever rules the paper prints when a window opens. Background reading helps: this overview of award-ballot vote purchasing explains how commercial services work in contests shaped like the bazaar, and the legality primer sets out where paid votes stand under American practice. Neither document changes what the ballot measures; they simply let a supporter decide with the facts in hand.