Viewers' Choice Awards 2026: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes in the Viewers' Choice Awards and why it matters

The Viewers' Choice Awards is WTVQ-TV's annual ask to its own audience: name the businesses around Lexington, Kentucky that you think do it best. WTVQ-TV is the ABC affiliate licensed to Lexington, and it brands the program under its ABC 36 identity. The ballot is a best-of contest in the business vertical, which means the people filling it in are ordinary viewers, customers and neighbors rather than an industry panel. A win carries weight precisely because the electorate is the station's local audience.

That community makeup shapes how a business should think about the ballot. Support comes from people who already watch ABC 36, follow the station's promotions, or live within reach of the stations and shops being nominated. A restaurant in Lexington or a service firm in the surrounding viewing area is competing for the attention of the same pool of viewers who also vote in the station's other promotions.

The ballot itself is hosted on Second Street, a platform widely used by local broadcasters for reader and viewer choice programs. The confirmed 2026 address is abc36.secondstreetapp.com/Viewers-Choice-Awards-2026, and WTVQ embeds the ballot on wtvq.com during the open window.

The dated record: every confirmed edition and the 2026 window

The Viewers' Choice Awards has confirmed editions running from 2021 through 2026. Six consecutive years on the same platform make this one of the steadier annual ballots run by a Kentucky broadcaster, and each edition has kept the same shape: the window opens on March 1 and closes on May 1. The 2026 edition ran from March 1 to May 1, 2026, and is now closed.

Each year lives at its own Second Street address. The 2026 ballot sits at abc36.secondstreetapp.com/Viewers-Choice-Awards-2026, the 2025 edition at abc36.secondstreetapp.com/Viewers-Choice-Awards-2025, the 2024 edition at abc36.secondstreetapp.com/Viewers-Choice-Awards-2024, the 2023 edition at abc36.secondstreetapp.com/Viewers-Choice-Awards-2023, and the 2022 edition at abc36.secondstreetapp.com/Viewers-Choice-Awards-2022-2. An earlier address, wtvq.secondstreetapp.com/Viewers-Choice-Awards, also carries the program name from the station's own subdomain.

Two things about the ballot are not published anywhere WTVQ has posted for this program. The station has not released the list of categories that any given year's ballot contains, and it has not printed a rule on whether one person can vote more than once or who is eligible to take part; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. If the March-to-May pattern holds, the next edition would be expected in 2027.

How a supporter votes on the WTVQ ballot today

The mechanic is a combined nomination and voting ballot, which is the format Second Street labels a NominationAndVotingBallot. In practice that means a supporter arrives at one page and does two things there: puts a business forward in a category where it is not yet listed, and casts votes for businesses that already appear. There is no separate nomination phase to wait for, which is why the full March 1 to May 1 window is open for both actions at once.

Before any action counts, the ballot asks the supporter to register an email address or sign in with one used before. Returning voters from a previous Viewers' Choice edition can use the same credentials, since WTVQ has kept the program on the same Second Street organization account, id 2570, across every edition since 2021.

Finding a business is done through the ballot's own search, so a supporter should type the business name as customers actually say it. If nothing appears, the nomination field is the route in. What happens after a vote is submitted, whether a supporter can come back the following day to cast another, is a rule WTVQ controls on the ballot itself, and the station has not printed it on the page. The ballot's own instructions at voting time are the authority a supporter should follow.

Where this ballot sits among Kentucky's best-of programs

Kentucky has an unusually crowded field of community-vote ballots, and the Viewers' Choice Awards is the television entry in it. The closest neighbours on this site include Best of Lexington KY and Chevy Chaser Best of Lex, both of which also court the Lexington market, plus Best in Kentucky, which takes a statewide view.

Outside Lexington, the siblings spread across the state: Best of Bowling Green serves the Barren River area, Best Places to Work in Kentucky honors employers rather than consumer businesses, and the BroadwayWorld Louisville Awards covers theatre in the state's largest city. Each one is run by a different publisher under its own separate rules.

What distinguishes the WTVQ program is its broadcaster backing and its fixed spring window. A television station promotes its ballot on air and through its weather and news audience, which gives nominated businesses exposure beyond the ballot page itself. For a Lexington business weighing where to put its outreach, the Viewers' Choice Awards is the ABC 36 audience specifically, while the print and digital siblings reach readers through their own channels.

Strengthening support in the Viewers' Choice Awards

Support in this program comes down to one address and one window. The ballot opens March 1 and closes May 1, so a business that waits until late April has spent most of the runway. The most effective push is early and specific: give customers the exact abc36.secondstreetapp.com address, tell them which category to look in, and remind them that the ballot may ask them to nominate the business before a vote can be cast.

WTVQ has not printed any rule about outside voting help, paid or otherwise, and it has not stated any ceiling on the votes a single person may cast. That silence cuts both ways: nothing on the page authorizes bulk voting, and nothing on the page forbids a business from asking every customer it has. The safe reading is that the ballot's own instructions at voting time govern, and votes the station considers irregular are the station's to handle as it sees fit.

For a fuller picture of what works in public ballots of this kind, our votes guide covers outreach that does not depend on guessing at unpublished rules, and buy award votes explains the service side for award ballots generally.