Tribune-Star Light It Up: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is Tribune-Star Light It Up and who runs it?

Tribune-Star Light It Up is a seasonal photo voting promotion staged by the Tribune-Star newspaper of Terre Haute, Indiana. The newspaper places its offices at 2800 Poplar St in Terre Haute, and every ballot it runs sits under its own address on the Second Street platform, tribune-star.secondstreetapp.com. The 2025 edition carried the printed title Light It Up! 2025, and the platform files the promotion under UGCVoting/UGCVotingPhoto, its classification for ballots built around photograph entries that the public votes on. Within the ballot world the program reads as a best-of style contest: supporters back entries rather than athletes, candidates or animals. What distinguishes it from a citywide favorites survey is the photographic format combined with a late-autumn placement, which puts the ballot in front of readers as the year winds down.

Item	Detail
Organizer	Tribune-Star, Terre Haute, Indiana
Ballot address	https://tribune-star.secondstreetapp.com/Light-It-Up-2025
Promotion type	UGCVoting/UGCVotingPhoto
Format	Photograph entries decided by public vote
Market	Terre Haute, Indiana
2025 status	Closed

Why the platform matters

Second Street hosts the ballot at a dedicated tribune-star subdomain, which means the address a supporter bookmarks is the publisher's own corner of the platform rather than a generic landing page shared with unrelated contests.

Which editions of Light It Up are confirmed, and when does the window fall?

The program's edition years are 2025 and 2026. The 2025 run is the cycle with printed dates: it opened on November 24, 2025 and closed on December 24, 2025, and the platform now marks it closed. The recurrence pattern reads as annual, and the publisher's own calendar backs that reading. Tribune-Star's Second Street account filled the same late-autumn slot in 2025 with the 2025 Q4 $15,000 Sweepstakes, which ran November 3 to December 10, 2025, and again in 2026 with the matching promotion, scheduled November 2 to December 9, 2026. Another photo ballot of the identical UGCVotingPhoto type, Cutest Purr-fect Fall Pet Photo Madness, ran September 16 to October 27, 2025. The publisher's public postings leave out a category lineup for this ballot, along with any standing statement about repeat voting or who may take part; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Dates for the 2026 edition are similarly absent from the platform's public listings, so a supporter planning around the current window should take every date straight from the Light It Up page when the next cycle opens.

Stage	Window	Notes
2025 voting	November 24 to December 24, 2025	Completed
2026 edition	Year listed, dates not posted	Latest listed cycle
Fall pet photo ballot	September 16 to October 27, 2025	Same UGCVotingPhoto format
Q4 sweepstakes	November 2 to December 9, 2026	Separate promotion, no voting

Reading the late-autumn pattern

Whatever else shifts between cycles, Tribune-Star keeps its biggest promotions clustered at year's end, and the 2025 Light It Up dates fit that cluster exactly.

How does a supporter cast a vote in Light It Up?

Voting takes place on the ballot page at https://tribune-star.secondstreetapp.com/Light-It-Up-2025. The page behaves like any Second Street ballot: entries appear with their photographs, a supporter chooses the entry to back, and the submitted choice registers right away. Because the promotion carries the UGCVotingPhoto classification, judging is visual, so a voter scans pictures rather than reading long descriptions. A few practical points follow from that setup. Light It Up lives at a tribune-star.secondstreetapp.com web address instead of inside an app, so a phone browser handles it exactly as a desktop does and nothing needs downloading first. Tribune-Star publishes no account requirement for this ballot, which means nothing indicates that a supporter must register before taking part. And the window outweighs everything else: a choice only counts while the ballot is open, and the 2025 edition stayed open for a full month, from late November through late December.

What the ballot leaves unsaid

No published text explains whether votes can be repeated, how often, or from how many devices. Silence of that kind deserves respect: an organizer that declines to print a rule may still apply limits it never wrote down, and the safest approach on any public ballot is to participate the way an ordinary visitor would. Supporters who want a deeper walkthrough of the submission process on ballots shaped like this will find the general sequence in the votes guide, though the Light It Up page remains the binding version of its own procedure.

Where does Light It Up sit among Indiana's public vote ballots?

Indiana carries a crowded shelf of best-of ballots, and Light It Up stands apart from nearly all of them. The nearest comparisons on this site are statewide and citywide favorites surveys: Best of Indiana, CommunityVotes Bloomington IN Best Of, CommunityVotes Evansville Best Of, CommunityVotes Fort Wayne Best Of, YourChoiceAwards South Bend Best Of and Best of Elkhart County from the Elkhart Truth. Those ballots cover wide community category slates across whole cities, counties or the state; Light It Up narrows to photograph entries judged by the public inside a compressed year-end window. Tribune-Star itself stages a neighbouring program on the same Second Street account: the 2026 Trib Star Readers' Choice, a nomination-and-voting ballot that ran February 4 to March 16, 2026. It is a separate promotion with its own rules, and the pair should not be confused when a supporter searches for the right page.

Ballot	Coverage	Format
Tribune-Star Light It Up	Terre Haute market	Photograph entries
Best of Indiana	Statewide	Community favorites
CommunityVotes Bloomington IN	Bloomington	Community favorites
CommunityVotes Evansville	Evansville	Community favorites
CommunityVotes Fort Wayne	Fort Wayne	Community favorites
YourChoiceAwards South Bend	South Bend	Community favorites
Best of Elkhart County	Elkhart County	Community favorites

The takeaway for supporters

If the goal is backing a photograph, this is the Indiana ballot built for it; if the goal is ranking local businesses across a whole city, the CommunityVotes and county surveys fit better.

How can a campaign strengthen support during the Light It Up window?

A month-long ballot rewards campaigns that start early and stay visible. Share the direct ballot address, tribune-star.secondstreetapp.com/Light-It-Up-2025, rather than sending people through the newspaper's homepage, because every extra click loses casual voters. Since entries are photographs, an entrant's own network is the natural base of support: friends, customers and neighbours respond to a picture far faster than to a business name alone. Schedule reminders before the December close, because the 2025 edition shut down on December 24 and late arrivals had no way to participate. Tribune-Star prints no policy addressing outside help for this ballot, so any push should stay within what an ordinary supporter can do: visit, choose, submit and return. For a fuller playbook that applies to ballots of this shape, see the votes guide.