Readerschoice Faq (kpcnews): How Voting Works & How to Win

What Readers' Choice is and who runs it

Readers' Choice is a reader-voted best-of program operated by The News Sun, a newspaper published from 102 N. Main St. in Kendallville, Indiana. The program lives on the publisher's own site, kpcnews.com, at the Readers' Choice FAQ address, and it is a public-vote program in the business vertical: readers nominate and then vote for local businesses rather than a panel choosing winners.

The News Sun is not a standalone operation. It sits at the center of a newspaper group that kpcnews.com presents as a single home page: the Herald Republican for Steuben County, The Star for DeKalb County, the News Sun itself for Noble and LaGrange counties, the Albion New Era for central Noble County, the Garrett Clipper for Garrett in DeKalb County, the Post and Mail for Whitley County, the Churubusco News for Churubusco, plus Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly, IN|All Sports and IN|Northwest News covering Huntertown in northwest Allen County. Readers' Choice is the reader-voted program that sits across that readership.

The FAQ page is the program's public front door. It carries the title "Readers' Choice FAQ", answers reader questions in a question-and-answer format, and holds the key dates for the current cycle. The ballot sits on the newspaper's own domain instead of an outside voting platform, which means the rules a supporter follows are the ones the newspaper prints on its own pages.

The dated record: which cycles are confirmed and when they ran

Three edition years stand behind this program: 2024, 2025 and 2026. The organizer's FAQ page carried dated windows for at least two of them, and the two sets of dates differ enough to show the schedule moves year to year rather than holding fixed.

For 2024, the FAQ printed a nomination period of March 21 through April 3 and a voting round of May 4 through May 17. For 2026, the same page printed a nomination period of April 1 through April 30, a voting round of June 1 through June 16, and a winners announcement of July 25. The 2026 cycle therefore starts nominations later in spring and pushes voting into June, roughly a month later than the 2024 voting round, and adds a stated results date at the end of July.

Because the program is annual and the dates shift, the practical rule for a supporter or a business is to treat the FAQ page as the source of the current cycle's calendar. The organizer has not published the full category roster on the FAQ page, so which categories a business can be nominated in is something to confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

What the published dates do not settle is the window for a future cycle. The 2027 dates, the precise opening day of the next nomination period, and any platform-side round dates beyond what the newspaper prints are not stated anywhere on the organizer's own pages, and no amount of pattern-matching from 2024 to 2026 will produce them honestly.

How a supporter votes in Readers' Choice today

The mechanic is a two-phase public vote, and the organizer's own rule governs the pace. First comes the nomination period: readers submit local businesses they want on the ballot. In 2026 that window ran April 1 through April 30. The FAQ even anticipates a common failure at this stage, answering the question of a reader who nominated a business that does not appear in the list of nominees on the website, which tells you the nomination step and the published nominee list are separate things a supporter should check.

Then comes the voting round. In 2026 it ran June 1 through June 16. During that window a supporter picks a category and votes for the business they back. The organizer's stated limit is one vote in each category per person per day, which is the single most important rule on the ballot: it means support is built by returning on separate days across the round, not by repeating a ballot within one day.

After the round closes, the cycle ends with a results date. For 2026 the FAQ set the winners announcement for July 25. A business that wants to mobilize customers should therefore plan around three dates, not one: the nomination window, the voting round, and the announcement. Everything a supporter needs to perform those steps is on the organizer's own pages at kpcnews.com, and the FAQ page is where the newspaper answers the questions readers actually ask about the process.

How this ballot sits beside its Indiana neighbours

Indiana has several best-of ballots, and Readers' Choice is distinct in three ways. First, it answers to a newspaper, The News Sun, rather than a dedicated contest platform. Second, it is hosted on the newspaper's domain, kpcnews.com, so the ballot, the FAQ and the results all live under the same masthead that publishes the group's other titles. Third, its readership is anchored in Kendallville and the counties of northeast Indiana: Steuben, DeKalb, Noble, LaGrange and Whitley, with reach toward Huntertown in northwest Allen County through IN|Northwest News.

The nearest large-market neighbour is CommunityVotes Fort Wayne Best Of, which covers the Fort Wayne market under a different organizer and a different platform. A business in the northeast corner of the state could reasonably appear on both, but the two ballots run on their own calendars and their own rules, and support earned on one does not transfer to the other.

Elsewhere in the state the sibling programs are Best of Indiana, CommunityVotes Bloomington IN Best Of, CommunityVotes Evansville Best Of, YourChoiceAwards South Bend Best Of and Best of Elkhart County. The Elkhart County program is the closest structural cousin, since it is also newspaper-run, but it answers to a different publisher. What makes Readers' Choice different is that its FAQ page is unusually explicit: it prints the cycle's dates, states the daily vote rule in plain words, and answers the nomination problems readers actually hit.

Strengthening support within this ballot's rules

This ballot rewards steady daily participation, because the organizer's rule allows one vote in each category per person per day. A business with a loyal customer base should treat the voting round, June 1-16 in the 2026 cycle, as a series of daily asks rather than a single announcement: a counter sign, a receipt insert or a social post each morning of the round, each reminding customers that they can come back tomorrow and vote again.

The nomination phase matters just as much. A business that is not nominated cannot appear on the ballot, and the FAQ itself acknowledges nominees that fail to show up in the published list, so confirm your listing early in the voting round rather than discovering it after June 16.

On the question of outside assistance, the organizer has published a per-person daily rule and nothing that licenses volume beyond it. Any plan to add votes should be weighed against that rule and against what the law and platform rules say about buying votes. If you are weighing paid support for a daily-limit ballot, read our votes overview first, and see how to get more votes online for organic tactics that fit a rule like this one.