Vadnais Heights Scarecrow Trail: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Vadnais Heights Scarecrow Trail and who runs it?

The Vadnais Heights Scarecrow Trail is a fall display contest paired with a public vote, staged by the City of Vadnais Heights Parks and Recreation department as part of its special events lineup. On the city's website the trail and its companion Halloween Party sit beside other seasonal gatherings the department runs, including the Winter Shindig, the Senior Lunch Series, the Ice Cream Social, the Music in the Park Series, Vadnais Heights Days, the Waffle Breakfast and PJs with Santa.

The Scarecrow Trail ballot lives on cityvadnaisheights.com itself; Parks and Recreation does not route this vote through an outside polling platform. Its address is the Scarecrow Trail and Halloween Party page under Community, Parks and Recreation, Special Events. Entries compete in the divisions the ballot names outright: business, organization and resident. Above the public vote sits a Mayor's Choice Award, for which the page carries a separate sign-up call.

The trail stands in Vadnais Heights, Minnesota, whose municipal address is listed as 800 E County Road E, Vadnais Heights, MN 55127. The department's own invitation tells visitors to celebrate all things fall, stroll through the trail and vote for their favorite entry at their own pace. That pairing of a walkable display with an online ballot is what sets this program apart from a purely digital poll: the scarecrows are built to be seen in person, and the vote carries the visit onto the city's site afterward.

Which editions have run, and when does the vote take place?

The trail's ballot carried a live public vote in both 2025 and 2026, which marks it as a returning seasonal fixture rather than a passing promotion. Local coverage in the Vadnais Heights area has called the city's Scarecrow Trail an annual fixture of family friendly Halloween fun, and the ballot page itself invites supporters to come back and vote for their favorite, wording that only fits a ballot held open across a season.

The season belongs to fall. The city's own framing places the trail and the Halloween Party inside its autumn calendar, with the display period stretching from September into November under the department's seasonal planning. Within that span the trail serves as the centerpiece of Vadnais Heights' Halloween celebrations, and the public vote runs alongside the display window instead of appearing as a separate online-only sprint.

What the city has not printed is precision. Neither the ballot page nor the department's event listings give open and close dates for the vote, so treat any date circulating elsewhere as unverified until you confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The department likewise publishes no nomination deadline for would-be builders and no per-supporter ceiling on ballots. A builder hoping to enter a scarecrow, and a voter hoping to plan a visit, both need the current season's posting to lock down those details.

How does a supporter cast a vote in the Scarecrow Trail?

Voting runs through the ballot on the city's Scarecrow Trail and Halloween Party page. The department sums up the experience as strolling through the Scarecrow Trail and voting for your favorite entry at your own pace. Put into practice, a supporter looks over the entries across the business, organization and resident divisions, settles on a favorite, and submits that choice on the ballot page.

The ballot is built for return visits. Its own line, come back here to vote for your favorite, treats the page as something a supporter keeps in view across the season rather than a form that shuts after a single evening. Nothing in the city's material describes an account requirement, a sign-in wall or a fee at the point of voting, and the choice is framed throughout as a favorite-entry selection rather than a ranked or scored judgment.

Because the trail is a physical display as well as a ballot, a supporter's earliest contact with the entries often happens in person. A visitor who walks the trail, spots a scarecrow built by a local business or a neighborhood household, and then wants to back it, goes to the city page and selects that entry. Supporters who cannot walk the trail reach the identical ballot directly through the city's site, which keeps the vote open to remote participants too.

How does this ballot compare with other Minnesota fan votes?

Minnesota's public-vote scene leans heavily on best-of polling, and the Scarecrow Trail is the odd one out. Best of the Midwest, Minnesota's Best, the Brainerd Dispatch's Best of the Best Brainerd Lakes Area, CommunityVotes Duluth, CommunityVotes Rochester and the Duluth News Tribune's Best of the Best are all broad recognition polls: long category slates in which businesses and services are ranked by the public, usually run by a media outlet or a dedicated voting platform.

The Vadnais Heights ballot works differently on every axis. It is run by a city government department, not a publisher. It covers a seasonal subject, scarecrows, instead of a statewide slate of categories. Its competition happens across the business, organization and resident divisions plus a Mayor's Choice Award rather than along a long category index. And it is welded to a place-based experience, a trail visitors walk, giving the vote a physical anchor the best-of polls lack.

For an entrant that difference matters. A scarecrow on this trail competes against a compact local field inside its division, while a business entered in a statewide best-of poll faces every nominee in its category across Minnesota. Support tactics transfer between the settings, yet the narrower field and the fixed seasonal window give a well-organized local campaign far more room to work here than in a crowded statewide bracket.

How can a favorite scarecrow entry pick up more support?

This ballot rewards whichever entry collects the most favorite-entry votes, so support-building in Vadnais Heights looks like local mobilization. A business-division entrant can point storefront traffic and social followers at the trail; an organization can ask its members to walk the display and vote; a resident builder can lean on neighbors already headed to the Halloween Party. The most direct tactic is handing people the city's ballot address and asking them to vote for your entry, since the ballot reaches anyone who opens the page.

The city publishes no guidance on outside help for this trail, so anyone weighing paid support starts from the general picture rather than a Scarecrow Trail-specific rule. The overview of how to get more votes online covers outreach that suits a seasonal municipal ballot, and the page on award and contest voting explains how purchased support is generally arranged for ballots shaped like this. Either way the vote wraps when the fall season does, which makes early momentum worth more than a late push.