Tag Selfie: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Tag Selfie is and who runs it

Tag Selfie, in this directory's framing, is the ballot selfie program attached to The Collegian, the Michigan newspaper that publishes at hillsdalecollegian.com under the masthead Hillsdale Collegian. The organizer is a registered newspaper rather than a chamber of commerce or a promotion company, and the voting page sits on the newspaper's own web domain at hillsdalecollegian.com/tag/ballot-selfie/. No outside promotion platform is attached to this entry, and no third-party contest host appears anywhere in its listing.

What makes the page unusual is its format. Most voting programs covered on this site are structured readers-choice ballots with named categories and a form to fill in. This one is a tag archive: a running list of the publisher's articles and posts filed under the ballot selfie tag, newest first. Participation, where it exists in a given cycle, is described inside the posts themselves rather than on a separate ballot form. The directory classifies it in the best-of vertical with a public-vote mechanic, because reader action is what the tag tracks, but the format is publisher coverage first.

The fastest way to see the difference is to compare it with the structured Michigan ballots listed at the end of this page. Those carry nomination rounds, category rosters and sponsor branding. The ballot selfie archive carries reporting, including a piece by Breana Noble on two Hillsdale College alumni, Joel Crookston and Steve Klein, who filed a motion in their lawsuit to overturn Michigan's prohibition of ballot selfies.

The dated story of this ballot

Exactly two edition years stand behind this program, 2025 and 2026, and that is the whole of the visible history. Two consecutive years are enough for the directory to treat the entry as annual instead of a single-cycle event. The live cycle is dated precisely: it opened on September 1, 2025 and closes on August 31, 2026. If the pattern of consecutive years continues, the next edition would fall in 2027, but The Collegian has not published a forward calendar saying so, and no date beyond the current window can be stated as fact.

The archive itself carries dated evidence of the two activities that sit side by side on the page. A post dated September 14, 2017 reports on the early stage of the lawsuit against Michigan's ballot selfie ban, filed by the two alumni named in the introduction. A post dated August 24, 2025, filed under the Big Grid and News sections, continues that coverage inside the current cycle. Reading the dates is how a supporter tells archive material from live-cycle material, because the tag page does not separate them.

What the page leaves out matters as much as what it shows. The Collegian publishes no category roster for this ballot, and it also holds back the vote cap, any one-vote-per-day rule and the eligibility wording; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The same holds for any nomination or platform round dates, none of which appear on the archive or anywhere else the organizer publishes.

How a supporter takes part today

The literal mechanic on this ballot is reading before acting. A supporter opens hillsdalecollegian.com/tag/ballot-selfie/ and finds a reverse-chronological list of posts under the ballot selfie tag. The newest item sits at the top, and inside the current window, which runs to August 31, 2026, that newest item is the operative instruction. If it asks readers to vote, comment, submit or share, the post itself says so; if it is pure reporting, there is no action to take that day.

Because the page is an archive, older posts stay visible below the current one, and that is where mistakes happen. A supporter who acts on the 2017 lawsuit coverage, or on any item dated before September 1, 2025, is responding to material outside the live cycle. The post date, printed at the top of each item, is the only marker the page gives. A repeat visit later in the cycle is also sensible: the archive grows during the window, and a newer post can supersede the instructions an earlier one carried.

Supporters should also resist importing rules from other ballots. The structured Michigan readers-choice programs run nomination rounds and per-day vote limits that are printed on their own pages. Nothing of that kind exists on the ballot selfie archive, and The Collegian has not published a rule sheet for this program anywhere. Whatever limit, deadline or eligibility condition applies to the current cycle lives in the current post, and if the post is silent, the honest position is that no limit has been published rather than that no limit exists.

How this ballot sits beside its Michigan neighbours

Michigan entries in this directory are, almost without exception, structured readers-choice ballots run by media companies on dedicated promotion platforms. Best of Northern Michigan, the Detroit Community Choice Awards and the DN Readers Choice Awards all follow the nominate-then-vote shape, with category rosters, sponsor slots and per-day voting rules printed on their ballot pages. The Detroit Music Awards and Detroit News Readers' Choice fit the same mould, each answering to its own publisher.

Tag Selfie breaks that mould in three ways. First, its host is the newspaper's own site rather than a promotion platform, so the ballot URL is a tag archive path on hillsdalecollegian.com. Second, its subject is a single civic topic, the legality of photographing a marked ballot in Michigan, rather than a roster of local businesses and services. Third, its confirmed footprint, 2025 and 2026, comes through dated posts rather than through a promotion listing, because no promotion exists for this market.

Where a supporter is concerned, the upshot is about where to look. On a structured ballot, the categories and rules are the page. Here, the archive is coverage and any voting instruction is incidental to it, so the supporter's job is to check whether the newest post asks for action at all. Anyone comparing Michigan programs side by side should read this one as a newspaper topic page with a public-vote dimension, not as a competitor to the readers-choice ballots named above.

Strengthening support on this ballot

Support on this ballot travels through the publisher's own readership. Because The Collegian has built no promotion listing and no structured form for the ballot selfie tag, the people who act on a post are the people who already read the archive, so sharing the specific live-cycle post with Michigan readers who follow the paper is the whole game. A link to the newest item carries more weight than a link to the bare tag page, because the item holds whatever instruction exists.

The organizer publishes no statement on outside help for this ballot, which cuts both ways: nothing permits it, and nothing prohibits it on the page. The safe reading is that the organizer's rules govern, and where they are silent, a support push that depends on real readers is the kind that survives scrutiny. Repetition tactics borrowed from structured ballots, such as daily returns across a nomination window, have no object here because no form exists to return to. General tactics that do transfer, from timing a share to mobilising an existing audience, are set out in our votes guide, and the pricing background sits on our award votes page for anyone weighing paid support against the organizer's silence. Winning the reader action is one claim; winning the program is a separate one that no published prize or category structure on this page speaks to.