Readers' Choice Clark County: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Readers' Choice Clark County is and who runs it

Readers' Choice Clark County is a best-of ballot published by the News and Tribune, the daily newspaper based in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and hosted on Second Street, the contest platform many US publishers use for community voting. The program is a business-facing reader poll: local businesses, services and figures are nominated and then voted on by the paper's readership across Clark County. Its 2026 ballot lives on the News and Tribune's Second Street subdomain, which keeps the program inside the publisher's own online property rather than on a standalone community-voting site.

What separates this ballot from the others it competes with in Indiana is scope and ownership. The CommunityVotes programs and the statewide Best of Indiana ballot are run by different organizers entirely; this one is a publisher product, tied to a masthead that already covers Jeffersonville news daily. That gives it a local-news audience rather than a contest-portal audience, and it ties the brand to the paper's annual Readers' Choice franchise rather than to a national platform.

Facts at a glance

A related caution for supporters: the News and Tribune also operates a companion program, Readers Choice Floyd, for its neighbouring Indiana readership. The two share a publisher and a platform but are separate ballots with separate categories, so a vote cast on the Floyd ballot does nothing for a Clark County nomination.

The dated record for the 2026 and 2025 editions

The program has confirmed runs in 2025 and 2026. The 2025 edition appears under the title "2025 Readers Choice - Clark County" on the publisher's Second Street property, and the 2026 edition is the live cycle, running under the RC CLARK NOM label on the same subdomain. The program therefore qualifies as an annual fixture on the News and Tribune calendar, though nothing on the ballot states how far back the series goes or whether a 2027 edition is planned. The year the program first ran has not been published; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The 2026 cycle carries two distinct dated phases. First, the nomination ballot at newsandtribune.secondstreetapp.com/2026-RC-CLARK-NOM/ runs a voting round from July 17 to July 26, 2026. Second, the organizer's own published material states that "the 2026 Readers' Choice contest is open for voting from August 4th to August 10th", which is the main window when the county's full category slate is decided. A supporter needs both dates: the July round handles nominations, and the August window decides winners.

Not every fact a supporter might want is printed. The ballot does not list prize details, does not state when results are announced, and does not publish an eligibility section for nominees. Those omissions are worth remembering because the program is large; a county-wide slate will have its own phase structure, and the News and Tribune has chosen to keep some of that structure off the public page.

How a supporter votes in the Clark County ballot

The mechanic on the News and Tribune ballot is a public vote with a daily-return rhythm. The organizer's published material for the 2026 cycle sets the allowance at one vote per day in each category on the slate, which defines both the cap and the opportunity: a supporter who cares about five local businesses can cast five votes today and five more tomorrow, every day the window is open. No purchase, ticket or subscription is part of the published process; paidVoting is not a feature of this program.

To participate, a supporter opens the 2026 RC Clark nomination ballot on the News and Tribune's Second Street subdomain. During the July 17 to July 26 round the page handles nominations, and during the August 4 to August 10 voting window the same Second Street interface takes votes across the Clark County category set. The supporter picks a category, selects the business or person to support, and submits the form. Returning the next day resets the allowance under the once-per-day rule.

Two practical notes follow from the structure. First, because the slate covers the whole county's business scene, most supporters will only care about a handful of categories, so finding a specific business means using the ballot's own category navigation rather than scrolling. Second, the once-per-day rule is the organizer's stated limit for this Readers' Choice program, not a suggestion; submitting beyond it would fall outside the News and Tribune's terms. If the form requests an email address or a sign-in, that prompt comes from the ballot itself and should be followed as shown on the page.

How this ballot sits beside its Indiana neighbours

Indiana has no shortage of best-of ballots, and Clark County's program differs from each of them in who answers for it. Best of Indiana runs at statewide scale under its own organizer. The CommunityVotes family splits the state into city programs: CommunityVotes Bloomington IN Best Of, CommunityVotes Evansville Best Of, CommunityVotes Fort Wayne Best Of and YourChoiceAwards South Bend Best Of. Best of Elkhart County is the closest structural cousin, since it too is a publisher-run county ballot, produced by a different newspaper for a different part of the state.

The practical difference for a Clark County business is audience source. A CommunityVotes city ballot draws people who seek out a contest portal; Readers' Choice Clark County draws the News and Tribune's existing readers, the people already following Jeffersonville news. That changes how support behaves: the paper's ballot rewards businesses with an established local customer base, while a portal ballot can be more sensitive to a campaign that reaches outside the regular audience.

It also matters that the News and Tribune runs more than one county program. Readers Choice Floyd sits on the same Second Street subdomain, which means a supporter landing on either ballot should verify which county the page header names before voting. A nomination meant for Clark County carries no weight on the Floyd ballot and the reverse, so the masthead at the top of the page is the check that keeps a vote in the right program.

Strengthening support in a daily-vote county ballot

Because the News and Tribune allows one vote per day in each category, the strongest legitimate tactic for a Clark County business is cadence, not volume. A customer reminded once might vote once; a customer reminded every few days through the August 4 to August 10 window can support the same business across every Readers' Choice category that applies to it. Put the ballot link on receipts, counters and social posts while the window is live, and tell people exactly which category to find.

Stay inside the organizer's frame. The once-per-day rule is the published limit for this Second Street ballot, and the July 17 to July 26 nomination round is separate from the main voting window, so timing a push around the wrong date wastes effort. A nomination drive that reads as irregular activity risks the whole entry, and no outside tactic can fix a ballot that the organizer has already set aside. For methods that fit daily-return ballots like this one, see our votes guide.