To Assemble The Tri States Local News Dream Team Poll: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Dream Team Poll is and who runs it

The To Assemble The Tri States Local News Dream Team Poll is a fan ballot run by WJLT, the Indiana radio station heard as My WJLT 105.3. It is not a Chamber of Commerce award or a city-wide readers contest. It is a station promotion built around one idea the page states plainly: the region is lucky in the talent on its local channels, and listeners should pick the news people they want on a dream team.

That puts it in the best-of vertical, but with a twist most best-of ballots do not have. The subject is local television news talent rather than local businesses, restaurants or services. A viewer who watches the area's evening broadcasts and a listener who knows the station from the car radio are the same audience, which is exactly the crowd the station is asking to vote.

Hosting is unusual in its own way. No outside balloting service is involved; the poll sits on my1053wjlt.com, the web address WJLT operates itself, at the path my1053wjlt.com/vote-to-assemble-the-tri-states-local-news-dream-team-poll/. The ballot sits inside the station's normal contest environment, alongside promotions the same site runs such as Goodwill Glam, St. Jude Comedy Night, Raptor Con and the Pet of the Week feature. In practical terms that means the look and feel of the vote is the station's own, and the rules that govern it are the station's rules.

The dated facts: editions and the August window

The confirmed edition years for the Dream Team Poll are 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, then again in 2025 and 2026. That is seven straight years, which is a longer unbroken run than many local polls manage, and it marks the ballot as an established piece of the station's late-summer calendar rather than a one-off experiment.

The window is as distinctive as the run. The proven voting phase for this program falls in August, in a single month rather than being spread across a season. The 2020 edition's recorded window runs from the start of August to the end of that month, and the program's timing is anchored to August throughout. That gives supporters a simple habit: when late summer arrives, the Dream Team ballot is the poll to look for on my1053wjlt.com.

What the confirmed facts do not settle is the fine print. The exact open and close days within August, any nomination or platform round dates, and the rules on how frequently a single supporter may cast a vote are all absent from the published material for this program; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Each August edition may also print its own closing line, so a supporter who voted in a previous year should not assume the current round follows the same schedule.

One more caution on the run itself: seven edition years prove recurrence, but they do not guarantee the 2027 edition, its month or its format. The station decides each cycle when to open the next Dream Team vote, and the only reliable source for that decision is the ballot page and the station's own promotion of it.

How to vote in the WJLT Dream Team Poll today

Voting is deliberately simple because the ballot has to work for a radio audience. A supporter hears the poll promoted on air, opens the Dream Team page on my1053wjlt.com, and picks the local news talent they want to back. There is no separate nomination phase for the public to enter, no judging panel between the vote and the result, and no second platform to create an account on. The vote happens on the station's own turf, in one place.

The practical sequence looks like this. Find the page at the station's Dream Team Poll address, or reach it through the station's contest menu if you are already browsing the site. Read whatever instructions sit beside the ballot in the current round, because those instructions are the operative rules for that edition. Make your selection from the local channel talent on offer, submit it, and note any message the page shows about whether or when you can vote again.

Two details deserve attention. First, because WJLT carries the vote on my1053wjlt.com itself instead of handing it to a dedicated balloting service, the page may look like an ordinary station promotion rather than a formal contest entry form; the vote button and the selection list are still there. Second, the August window means timing matters. A vote cast for a round that has closed does nothing for anyone, so confirm the current round is live before rallying supporters, and treat the page's own stated closing point as the deadline.

How this ballot sits beside its Indiana neighbours

Indiana has no shortage of fan-vote programs, and the Dream Team Poll is the odd one out among them. The state's biggest ballots are business best-of contests: Best of Indiana covers the whole state, while the CommunityVotes series runs city by city in Evansville, Fort Wayne, Bloomington and as the YourChoiceAwards South Bend Best Of. The Best of Elkhart County does the same job for a county readership under a newspaper's banner.

Against that set, WJLT's poll differs on three axes. Its subject is people rather than businesses, so a nominee is an anchor or reporter rather than a shop or restaurant. Its host is a radio station running the vote on my1053wjlt.com rather than a dedicated contest platform or a newspaper's special section. And its window is a single August month rather than the longer spring and summer seasons those bigger ballots typically occupy.

For a supporter, the practical consequence is scope. This poll will not ask you to choose a favourite plumber; it asks which local news presenters you rate. Someone nominated here gains visibility with exactly the audience that watches local news in the Tri-State, not a statewide shopping audience. If a business wants the broader readers-choice exposure, one of the city ballots is the better fit; if a news personality is the subject, this is the poll that matches.

Strengthening support within the station's rules

Because this is a radio ballot, the strongest honest support comes from the audience the station already talks to every day. A nominee featured in local news coverage has a natural constituency: colleagues, viewers and community contacts who already know the face. Rallying those people directly, sharing the my1053wjlt.com ballot link with a personal note, and timing the ask for when the station is actively promoting the Dream Team round in August will do more than any generic push.

Be careful with anything automated. The ballot has no published rules text on outside help, repeat voting or eligibility, which means whatever WJLT prints beside the current Dream Team ballot is the only authority on what is allowed, and radio stations are sensitive to anything that smells like ballot-stuffing on a promotion tied to their own brand. Manufactured volume on a small, personal contest like this stands out more than it would on a statewide ballot with thousands of entries. Support the nominee the way a viewer would: ask people who genuinely watch, remind them once the round is live, and let the station's own ballot count the result.