White Bear Press All American Bears Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the All American Bears Contest and who runs it?

The All American Bears Contest is a community photo vote staged by the White Bear Press, the newspaper serving White Bear Lake, Minnesota. The masthead belongs to Press Publications, and the publisher's own contact page says so directly: "The White Bear Press is published by Press Publications, located in White Bear Lake." The newsroom operates from 4779 Bloom Ave in White Bear Lake, which anchors both the organizer and its audience in the same city.

For the 2026 cycle the publisher ran the contest on Second Street, the audience-engagement platform behind whitebearpress.secondstreetapp.com. The ballot sat at https://whitebearpress.secondstreetapp.com/All-American-Bears-Contest and carried the technical classification UGCVoting/UGCVotingPhoto, a Second Street format in which participants upload picture entries and the public then picks favorites. Functionally that places the program in the best-of family of local media contests, closer in spirit to a reader-choice ballot than to a sweepstakes, even though its surface is photographic rather than a directory of businesses.

Two identity points matter for anyone researching this ballot. The organizing name on the promotion is White Bear Press rather than Press Publications, so searches under the parent company alone can miss it. The contest also shares its platform domain with everything else the paper stages, which is why the address above points at the specific promotion path instead of the domain root.

When did the All American Bears Contest run?

Everything proven about this program's history fits inside a single year. The 2026 ballot began accepting choices on May 14, 2026 and stopped on June 22, 2026, and the Second Street listing marks the promotion closed. Both boundary dates come from the promotion listing itself, so they carry the platform's own weight. Nothing earlier has been tied to the contest name, and the publisher has announced nothing afterward.

Gaps remain where a cautious voter would want detail. White Bear Press printed no category list for this ballot, so any division of the contest into named groups cannot be established from what the organizer released. The publisher likewise circulated no vote cap and no eligibility terms alongside the 2026 promotion, leaving both the pace of repeat voting and the pool of allowed entrants undefined.

This is the first confirmed edition; whether it returns next year is not yet published; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How does a supporter cast a vote in the All American Bears Contest?

The act of voting stayed light. During the live window a supporter opened the All American Bears Contest page on whitebearpress.secondstreetapp.com, scrolled the photo entries posted for that cycle, selected a favorite, and submitted the vote control beside it. That matches the promotion's UGCVoting classification, which puts the decision in the hands of any visitor rather than a judging panel.

Two behavioral details went unstated by White Bear Press. Whether the form asked a visitor to identify themselves before counting a choice, and how often a repeat visit counted toward an entry's total, were never spelled out for the 2026 ballot. A future edition would need to print its own cadence rules before supporters can plan a voting schedule around them.

Because the 2026 window has closed, nobody can cast a new selection today; the steps above describe what a supporter would repeat if Press Publications opens a later ballot under the same promotion path. Readers mapping out a support plan for a future run can begin with practical methods for earning more votes, then adapt them to whatever rules the next edition prints.

Where does this ballot fit among Minnesota's reader-choice contests?

Minnesota hosts a crowded field of public choice ballots, and the All American Bears Contest sits beside several better-known programs. Neighbors across the state include Best of the Midwest, Minnesota's Best, the Best of the Best Brainerd Lakes Area from the Brainerd Dispatch, CommunityVotes Duluth, CommunityVotes Rochester, and the Duluth News Tribune's Best of the Best. All belong to the broad best-of genre in which readers champion local businesses, restaurants, and services.

The nearest relative lives under the same roof. Press Publications also staged the 2026 Best of the Press - White Bear Lake/Vadnais Heights ballot on the identical Second Street domain, a nomination-and-voting format that ran from April 29 through August 2, 2026. Around those two programs the paper kept a full engagement calendar: a Q2 $5,000 Sweepstakes ran April 20 to May 20 and overlapped the bears ballot's first week, a Q3 $5,000 Sweepstakes followed from July 27 to August 26, and a Q4 $15,000 Sweepstakes is listed for November 2 to December 9. Survey formats filled the remaining gaps, with an Are You A Winner Form collecting responses from August 7 to September 9 and a Best of the Press Media Kit form staying open from April 29 to September 9. The bears ballot therefore held its own spring-to-summer slot inside that rotation.

Format separates this ballot from both groups. The best-of siblings spread many categories across whole cities; the bears contest narrows to submitted photographs, which changes where a supporter's attention goes and how an entry earns visibility. Anyone comparing options in the market can continue with the publisher's Best of the Press ballot and the statewide programs listed below.

How can a supporter give a favorite entry a stronger shot?

Visibility drives results in a photo vote. An entrant who circulates a submission through White Bear Lake friend groups, asks each contact to visit the Second Street ballot, and sends a reminder partway through the window reliably outperforms an entry left to drift. Timing matters as well: pushing hardest in the closing stretch catches voters who forgot an earlier intention, and in 2026 that meant working against a June 22 finish rather than an open-ended poll.

On outside help, White Bear Press published no rule either welcoming or barring paid assistance for this contest, so anyone weighing that route should judge the organizer's terms whenever a new edition prints them. Background on award-style vote services and the surrounding law sits in the legality guide. What no purchase can alter is the outcome test: the entry with the most supporter choices when the ballot closes finishes first, and even a funded push stops at that same threshold without a promise.