2026 Frankfort's Faves: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Frankfort's Faves is and who runs it

Frankfort's Faves is the readers' choice ballot that The Frankfort State Journal runs for its home market in Frankfort, Kentucky. Frankfort is the state capital, and the newspaper serves the city together with Franklin County, so the businesses on the ballot are ones local readers already use. The vertical is a classic best-of program: local business categories, local supporters, and a paper putting its masthead behind the result.

Second Street, the contest platform many US newspapers use for readers' choice and sweepstakes promotions, hosts the form on the newspaper's account at thefrankfortstatejournal2.secondstreetapp.com. The official 2026 ballot address is thefrankfortstatejournal2.secondstreetapp.com/2026-Frankforts-Faves, and the account also carries the State Journal's quarterly sweepstakes, which sit beside the contest as separate promotions.

Facts at a glance

The mechanism is public voting. Readers, not a panel, decide which businesses appear as favorites, which is why the program behaves like the readers' choice contests readers know from other papers rather than like a judged award.

The dated history: editions, window and what is not published

The confirmed years for Frankfort's Faves are 2023, 2025 and 2026. No 2024 edition appears on the listing for the newspaper's account, so the program ran in three of the four most recent years. Each edition has carried its own ballot address, including a 2025 nomination ballot and a 2023 edition on the same Second Street account.

The 2026 window ran from May 29 through August 27, 2026, and the ballot is now closed. Within that window the promotion ran as one nomination-and-voting form, so supporters nominated and voted on a single page instead of moving through separate rounds. The prior edition covered an almost identical stretch of the calendar in 2025, opening May 30 and closing August 28, which is where the late-spring opening pattern comes from.

Two things the publisher has not printed alongside the ballot are the list of categories and the contest rules. The State Journal does not publish a category roster outside the live form, and it does not state a per-supporter vote limit or eligibility terms beside the ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Given the 2023, 2025 and 2026 runs, a further edition would fit the paper's pattern, but dates for a next round are announced by the publisher in its own time and do not exist yet in any published form.

How a supporter votes on the Frankfort's Faves ballot

The supporter's job is simple once a window is open. The form is a Second Street ballot on the State Journal's account, reached through the newspaper's own links. A supporter opens it, moves through the categories shown on that edition's page, and names a favorite local business in each category they care about. Where the form asks for a write-in, the business name should be entered the way customers actually say it in Frankfort, because the publisher tallies nominations against real local businesses.

Because the 2026 promotion put nomination and voting on one form, the two were one action rather than two rounds a supporter had to remember. That lowers the barrier: a single visit can carry a supporter's picks through, subject to whatever return-visit rules the live form states.

What the ballot page does not state is how many times a supporter may come back. Second Street ballots across many newspapers handle this differently, some allowing daily returns and some restricting them, and the State Journal has not printed its own rule in any page held for this program. The live form's own wording, shown at voting time, is the only rule that governs.

After submission, the window's closing date is the hard stop. A ballot sent after August 27, 2026 does not count toward the 2026 result, and support for a favorite business waits for the paper's next edition.

How this ballot sits beside its Kentucky neighbours

Frankfort's Faves is the capital-city entry in a wider set of Kentucky readers' choice and best-of programs. Nearby on this site are Best of Bowling Green, the statewide Best in Kentucky, Best of Lexington KY, Best Places to Work in Kentucky, the BroadwayWorld Louisville Awards and Chevy Chaser Best of Lex. Every one of them belongs to a different publisher with a different ballot.

What distinguishes the Frankfort program is scale and organizer. It belongs to a single city paper serving Frankfort and Franklin County, not a metro daily or a statewide outlet, so a nomination there is a claim about standing in a small, close-knit market where readers personally know the businesses named. Winning in a market of that character carries a different kind of weight than a large-metro readers' choice title.

The combined nomination-and-voting format is also worth noting for any business comparing programs. Some Kentucky readers' choice ballots split nomination and voting into separate windows; Frankfort's Faves, in its 2026 edition, ran both together between late May and late August. A business planning outreach for the next edition should therefore plan around a single stretch of calendar rather than two.

Strengthening support for a Frankfort's Faves nomination

A business that wants to place well here is working with a small, local electorate, which rewards direct outreach over volume. Ask regulars at the counter, put the ballot link in the shop's own posts, and send a reminder out before the closing date, since the 2026 run lasted nearly three months and late reminders catch supporters who meant to vote and forgot.

Because the ballot combines nomination and voting, one ask does both jobs, but how many repeat visits a supporter may make goes unstated in print, so read the live form before building any daily-reminder routine around it. Organizers of readers' choice contests generally treat bulk or automated voting as a rules matter under their own terms, and the State Journal's terms are not printed beside the ballot, which makes the live wording the only authority. For general context on what outside support looks like across contest ballots, see our votes guide and the page on buying votes online, and note that no vendor, this site included, can promise anyone a win.