Best of Franklin County (Ottawa Herald): How Voting Works & How to Win

What is Best of Franklin County and who runs it?

Best of Franklin County (Ottawa Herald) is a public online vote run by the Ottawa Herald and hosted at bestof.cherryroad.com. In this directory it falls under best-of, and the city attached to it is Ottawa, in Franklin County, Kansas. The county comes from the program title itself, and no other place is attached to the ballot.

The ballot page carries a copyright line in the name of CherryRoad Media, Inc., which points to the platform behind the site. The sections below take the questions a reader is most likely to bring to this ballot in order, starting with the editions and the dates.

Which editions are confirmed and when does voting fall?

Three editions are confirmed for this program: 2022, 2023 and 2024. The dates shown here belong to 2024, because the 2024 timeline is the only one printed. That cycle ran in three stages across late spring and summer, with nominations opening May 27, 2024 and closing June 9, 2024, the voting round running from June 17 to June 30, 2024, and winners announced August 14, 2024.

The 2024 timeline

What later cycles look like

Nothing in the 2024 timeline sets the window for a 2026 or 2027 round, so a later voter should not assume the June pattern holds. Whether the program returns in either year is not yet published, and day-level windows for a later cycle are not printed; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How does a supporter vote on the ballot today?

The mechanic is a public online vote. A supporter opens the program's event page on bestof.cherryroad.com during an open round, finds the nominee they want to back, and casts a public vote for that nominee. Voting starts from the event page, which is the only entry point named here.

What the ballot shows and what it leaves open

The timeline does not name the categories a voter can pick from, so a nominee's category has to be found on the live event page. Per-voter limits and eligibility rules are not printed in the Ottawa Herald timeline, which leaves both open until the organizer posts them.

Steps that depend on the live round

Round dates change from cycle to cycle, so the safest order is to open the event page first, read the dates of the round that is open, and then vote. In the 2024 cycle the winners came out in August, well after the voting round closed on June 30, rather than in the same week as the vote.

How does this ballot sit beside other Kansas best-of programs?

Six other programs on this site share the Kansas best-of label: Best of Johnson County, Best of KC (Kansas City Magazine), Best of Lawrence, Best of Wichita, CommunityVotes Overland Park and CommunityVotes Topeka. Each is listed as its own program with its own route, so the dates and ballot for one should not be read as the dates for another.

What sets this program apart in that set is its Franklin County name, its Ottawa Herald organizer, and a confirmed run of three editions from 2022 through 2024. The table below lists the market each neighbouring title names.

How can a supporter build more votes for a Franklin County nominee?

Support work on this ballot begins with the mechanic itself. Every vote is a public vote cast during the open round, so the most useful effort is getting a nominee's own readers to the event page while the round is live. The 2024 voting round ran June 17 to June 30, 2024, which shows how compressed the open window was in that cycle.

The Ottawa Herald timeline does not say what it allows for outside promotion, so check its terms before sharing a link or asking friends to vote. For a general checklist on support campaigns, read the guide to getting more votes online, and for the legal position on purchased votes see the overview of whether buying votes is legal.