Ankeny's Best Community's Choice Awards is a best-of business ballot that The Des Moines Register runs for Ankeny, Iowa, with Second Street as host. The 2026 edition opened February 27 and closed February 28. Four straight editions have now been held, the earliest recorded in 2023.
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The Des Moines Register operates Ankeny's Best Community's Choice Awards, a best-of recognition ballot that serves the Ankeny community within the Register's Des Moines, Iowa coverage area. Second Street, a contest platform that hosts ballots for media groups, carries the program, and the Register's ballot lives at its gannettcontests.com subdomain.
The ballot follows a public-vote mechanic, meaning the general public casts votes to determine which nominees appear as winners. The vertical is best-of, and the categories focus on business. The promotion type on the platform is registered as Ballot/VotingBallot.
The program name references Ankeny directly, which places the ballot's audience in that city and its surrounding community. The Register's broader market covers the Des Moines metropolitan area, so this is among the community-focused ballots the publisher operates across its coverage zone.
The current page, titled as the 2026 Winners page, displays results from the completed February 2026 vote. The URL is https://desmoinesregister.gannettcontests.com/2026-Ankenys-Best-Communitys-Choice-Awards-Winners. The ballot's placement within the Register's contest ecosystem means it shares infrastructure with the publisher's other community engagement programs, though each program runs independently with its own ballot, window and rules.
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Program | 2026 Ankeny's Best Community's Choice Awards Winners |
| Organizer | The Des Moines Register |
| Platform | Second Street |
| City | Ankeny, Iowa |
| Vertical | Best-of, business |
| Mechanic | Public vote |
| 2026 window | February 27 through February 28 |
| Status | Closed |
The ballot has been confirmed for every year from 2023 through 2026. The platform's date range across those editions spans October 10, 2023 through February 28, 2026, which places the earliest recorded activity in early October of the first confirmed year.
The 2026 edition opened on February 27 and closed on February 28. That short window is the ballot's most recent active period, and the page status is now closed. The 2026 page is titled as a Winners page, aligning with the results having been finalized.
The platform dates suggest the program has historically started in October, based on the earliest recorded date. However, the 2026 edition specifically opened in late February, indicating the calendar has not followed a single fixed slot across all editions. When the next edition will open, or whether it follows the same February pattern, is not stated on the page.
The Register has not listed the award categories, the per-supporter voting frequency, or the eligibility requirements on this results page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. For a business that appeared on the ballot, the absence of those details means planning the next cycle's outreach depends on watching for the next launch rather than extrapolating from this closed edition's structure.
Because this is a public-vote ballot hosted on Second Street, a supporter participates through the platform's ballot interface. The 2026 page now shows winners rather than an active ballot, since the edition closed on February 28. A visitor to the current URL sees the results of the completed vote rather than an open form.
When the program's next edition opens, the ballot would follow Second Street's VotingBallot format, where supporters browse the categories presented on the page and cast votes for their preferred nominee in each. The public-vote mechanic means outcomes are determined by reader participation rather than a judging panel or editorial selection. The categories focus on local businesses, which is consistent with the best-of vertical.
The confirmed URL list includes variants with a -nom suffix for the 2024, 2025 and 2026 editions. Those variants correspond to separate pages from the main ballot and the main Winners page, though the exact function they serve is not described on the current page. They appear alongside the standard ballot and Winners URLs for each confirmed edition year.
Whether the voting ballot requires an account, an email verification, or allows a supporter to return on multiple days does not appear on the closed Winners page. Those rules become visible only when a live ballot is active. A supporter who wants to participate should watch for the next edition to launch on the Register's contest subdomain.
Within Iowa's best-of ballot landscape, this program shares the market with several sibling contests listed on this site. Best of Des Moines (CITYVIEW) and Best of Des Moines (Business Record) both serve the broader Des Moines metro, while Cedar Rapids CommunityVotes and Best of Cedar Rapids (The Gazette) cover the Cedar Rapids market to the east. Best of the Corridor serves the corridor region, and the AHBA Parade of Homes covers the Ames area.
What distinguishes Ankeny's Best from those siblings is its focus on a suburb rather than an entire metro or region. The Des Moines Register, as the publisher, brings its newsroom's reach and its Second Street infrastructure to a ballot scoped to its own community. That scope means the businesses on the ballot are Ankeny-area establishments rather than metro-wide chains or regional winners.
For a business that operates in Ankeny, this ballot is more targeted than the metro-wide Des Moines best-of programs. A win here signals strong support within the immediate community. The trade-off is a smaller potential voter pool compared with a metro-wide ballot.
All of these Iowa programs share the best-of vertical, where the public votes to select winners among local businesses. They differ in publisher, platform, geographic scope and category structure. The Cedar Rapids programs run under their own publishers, while the Des Moines-area ballots each answer to their own newsroom or publication.
For a business listed on this ballot, support comes down to reaching the customers who already know the brand. The public-vote mechanic means every vote comes from a person who visits the ballot page and selects a nominee. Because the 2026 edition ran for a short window in late February, a business's outreach had a narrow period to convert customer goodwill into votes.
The Register does not publish specific rules about outside assistance or organized voting pushes on this page. Whatever terms apply to third-party vote generation would be visible only on the live ballot's rules when a new edition opens.
General tactics for strengthening a ballot position, such as mobilizing an existing customer base through email and social channels, apply here as they do on any community-voted contest. For a broader discussion, see our guide on getting more votes online.
Go to desmoinesregister.gannettcontests.com and find the Ankeny's Best Community's Choice Awards page. The current 2026 page displays winners from the completed February vote rather than an active ballot form.
The 2026 edition closed on February 28. A future edition will appear on the same contest subdomain when the Register launches it. Watch for the ballot to replace the current Winners display.
When a live ballot opens, the Second Street interface presents the category lineup. The ballot is a best-of business format, so the categories cover local commercial services and establishments in the Ankeny area.
Choose your preferred nominee in each category and submit through the ballot form. The public-vote mechanic means every supporter's selections count toward the final results. The per-supporter frequency is not stated on the current page.
Whether the ballot permits a supporter to vote on multiple days is not stated on the closed page. If the live ballot allows daily returns, check back each day the voting window remains open.
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Last reviewed June 2026. Contest dates, rules and vote caps change each season — always confirm the current rules on the official contest page before you vote.
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