For The Nachos You Think Should Be Named West Michigans Favorite: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the WGRD nachos vote is and who runs it

For The Nachos You Think Should Be Named West Michigans Favorite is a food best-of ballot run by WGRD-FM, a commercial rock radio station broadcasting at 97.9 FM in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The program lives at wgrd.com, the broadcaster's own web address, with every rule, date and result coming from the station itself rather than from a hosted ballot service.

The format is simple and food-focused. The station asked listeners for nominations of West Michigan's favorite nachos, reported receiving tons of them, then narrowed the field to the top ten. The public vote decides once and for all which plate should be named West Michigan's favorite. It is a single-question food ballot, not a multi-category awards program.

The ballot page sits among the station's local coverage sections, which include Best Of Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids News, Michigan News, West Michigan News, and West Michigan's Favorite More From 97. Those labels place the nachos vote inside WGRD's wider West Michigan's Favorite family of listener polls.

Confirmed editions and the printed voting window

The dated history for this program covers six edition years: 2018, then 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. That pattern reads as an annual program on WGRD's calendar in recent cycles, with a break between the first run and the current stretch. The 2018 window is the one with printed day-level detail: voting ran from 12 p.m. noon on Monday October 23 until 11:59 p.m. on Sunday October 29, a one-week span from a Monday midday start to a Sunday-night close in late October.

That historical window is the only day-level timing attached to this program's published pages. The station has not printed the exact start and finish days for the current cycle; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Two other timing questions stay open. The nomination round is described only as a finished step before the top ten was set, with no dates attached. And no platform-round schedule exists for this market, so any mid-vote stages would be visible only on the ballot page. Vote caps, one-per-day rules and eligibility terms are likewise absent from the published text, which leaves the live ballot as the sole authority on how the current round is bounded.

How a supporter votes on the nachos ballot today

The mechanic a supporter performs is a straightforward public vote on wgrd.com. You open the nachos ballot page, review the ten finalist plates that survived the nomination round, pick the serving you believe should carry the West Michigan favorite title, and submit your choice. The station frames it as letting readers vote and decide the question, so the count is a straight tally of public selections with no judging panel described.

Nothing on the published text describes an account requirement, a login, or a write-in step; the nomination stage is already closed once the top ten is set. That makes this one of the lightest ballots to participate in: one page, ten options, one selection. If WGRD-FM layers anything onto the current round, such as a sign-in or a repeat-vote allowance, it would be stated on the ballot page itself, since WGRD-FM runs the vote on property it controls.

Because the host is the organizer, there is no external platform page to reconcile with the station's own announcements. Every instruction a supporter needs is printed where the vote happens. Treat that page as the complete rulebook for the current round, since no separate rules document exists for this program in its published pages.

Where this ballot sits among Michigan reader votes

The nachos ballot is one of several Michigan reader-vote programs on this site. Its nearest neighbours include Best of Northern Michigan, a regional best-of covering the northern part of the state, and Grand Rapids Magazine Best of GR, which shares the Grand Rapids market with WGRD's poll.

Other siblings sit in Detroit: the Detroit Community Choice Awards, the Detroit Music Awards, the Detroit News Readers' Choice and the DN Readers Choice Awards. Those are city-level, multi-category programs, while the WGRD ballot is a single food question for West Michigan.

Within its own publisher, the nachos vote belongs to the station's West Michigan's Favorite family. The same WGRD-FM publisher also runs the West Michigan's Favorite Tattoo Artist program, another single-question listener poll. That shared publisher link matters for readers: if you have voted in the station's tattoo ballot, the nachos vote uses the same host address and the same plain public-vote shape. What separates this program from every sibling above is its narrowness; where the Detroit programs spread across businesses and categories, this ballot asks exactly one question about nachos and answers it with ten finalists.

Strengthening support for a WGRD finalist

Support for a nachos finalist travels the way local radio support always does. The ballot counts nothing but public selections on wgrd.com, so the practical path is mobilizing the people who already like the plate: post the ballot link, ask regulars directly, and remind them during the voting window before the Sunday-night close that an earlier cycle used.

WGRD-FM has not published any policy on outside help or bulk voting for this poll, so no organizer guidance constrains or endorses any particular approach. What is certain is the count itself: the station tallies the public selections on its own site and names the winner, so every vote a finalist earns has to arrive through the ballot page.

For general, organizer-agnostic techniques that work on public radio polls of this shape, see how to get more votes online. The core moves there, asking your existing audience first and making the ask specific to one finalist, fit this ten-option ballot without any changes.