2026 Best of the Press - White Bear Lake/Vadnais Heights: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes and why this White Bear Lake readers' choice ballot exists

Best of the Press is the readers' choice program of the White Bear Press, a Minnesota newspaper located at 4779 Bloom Ave in White Bear Lake. The 2026 edition carries both White Bear Lake and Vadnais Heights in its title, because the paper serves that combined east-metro market and asks its readers to name the local businesses, people and places they think do it best.

The people who vote are the paper's own audience. A community ballot like this one works only when the nominees' customers show up, so the contest is really a map of who in White Bear Lake and Vadnais Heights has a loyal following. That is why local shops, restaurants, clinics and service businesses treat the window as a seasonal campaign and ask their regulars to participate.

The ballot runs as a NominationAndVotingBallot on Second Street, the platform the paper uses for all of its community promotions. Second Street is a standard choice for newspaper readers' choice contests, and the paper's account sits on its own domain, whitebearpress.secondstreetapp.com, so every edition it runs lives at one address.

For context on how ballots like this compare across the state, the sibling page for award-style contests explains the mechanics that most community ballots share.

The dated record for Best of the Press in White Bear Lake

Three editions of the Best of the Press ballot are confirmed on the White Bear Press's Second Street account: 2023, 2025 and 2026. Each ran as its own promotion with its own dated page, and the 2024 season has no edition in that listing. The paper has not published a written statement fixing the program's schedule, so the edition years above are the recurring fact to work from.

The 2026 window is the most precisely dated. The ballot opened on April 29, 2026 and closed on August 2, 2026, a span the paper's own voting notice echoed when it told readers voting ran through August 2 in the White Bear Lake/Vadnais Heights market. The same notice gave August 16 as the close for the paper's Shoreview edition, and August 2 again for its Quad Communities & The Citizen edition, which shows the paper staggers its markets across sister ballots.

What the paper has not published is the fine print: no eligibility rule for who may be nominated, and no category list distributed outside the live ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The once-a-day voting line is the only stated participation rule attached to this edition.

If you are tracking the wider Minnesota best-of calendar, the Best of the Midwest page and the Minnesota's Best page cover statewide ballots that run on different schedules from this one.

How to vote once a day on the White Bear Press ballot

The mechanic on the 2026 ballot was plain public voting on Second Street. A supporter opened the paper's promotion at whitebearpress.secondstreetapp.com, picked a category, chose or wrote in a nominee, and pressed the vote control. The White Bear Press's own notice, published through a local clinic's promotion of its nominee, states the rule in one line: voting is open and you can vote once a day, through August 2 for the White Bear Lake/Vadnais Heights ballot.

That once-a-day rule shapes every serious campaign in this contest. A business with a hundred daily customers has a hundred daily votes available, not one total, so the winning organizers in a ballot like this are the ones who remind their people every morning for the whole season. The window ran from late April to early August, which gave nominees a long runway to build the habit.

The ballot's type is worth noting too. As a NominationAndVotingBallot, the Second Street form combines the nomination step and the voting step in one promotion, so a write-in in the early weeks becomes a listed nominee later. The paper has not published the exact cutoff between those phases; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Supporters looking for the literal click-by-click sequence can follow the voting steps listed on this page, which mirror what the 2026 form asked of a voter.

How this ballot sits beside its Minnesota neighbours

Minnesota runs a busy readers' choice circuit, and the Best of the Press ballot occupies a specific corner of it: the White Bear Lake and Vadnais Heights community, run by a single suburban newspaper rather than a metro daily or a statewide network. The other ballots on this site's Minnesota pages answer to different publishers and different cities, so a nomination in one carries no weight toward another.

The nearest statewide comparisons are CommunityVotes Duluth and CommunityVotes Rochester, which are city-scoped programs in their own markets, and the Best of the Best Brainerd Lakes Area and Best of the Best (Duluth News Tribune), both newspaper-run like this one. The White Bear Press ballot differs from all of them in audience scale: it speaks to one east-metro community pair instead of a lakes region or a port city.

The paper itself runs a wider promotion calendar on the same Second Street account, including sweepstakes, surveys and a photo contest, and a separate Holiday Lights Contest page covers its winter program. A supporter typing the paper's domain reaches all of them, so it pays to confirm which promotion you are voting in before casting a ballot.

None of these neighbours shares a ballot, a window or a winner list with Best of the Press in White Bear Lake, and no nomination transfers between them.

Strengthening support inside this ballot's rules

The once-a-day rule is the whole game in this contest, and it is printed by the organizer, not guessed at. The White Bear Press's notice says a supporter can vote once a day through the window's close, so a campaign that converts customers into daily voters multiplies its reach by the number of days left. A reminder at the till, a counter sign, or a short link to the ballot does more in this format than any single-day push.

The paper has not published a rule about outside help, paid promotion or vote-gathering services for this ballot. That silence is not permission, and it is not prohibition; it is simply an unpublished position. An organizer can always act on votes it judges improper, so any business considering outside support should read the live ballot's own terms first. The general background is at how to get more votes online.

Taken only from what is published about this program, the honest summary is narrow: one vote per person per day, a spring-to-summer window, and a community audience that expects to see its own local names on the form.