2025 Cutest Pet Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who Votes in the Joplin Globe Cutest Pet Contest and What the Ballot Is

The Cutest Pet Contest is the Joplin Globe's photo vote for pets, and the people who decide it are ordinary readers across the Joplin, Missouri market rather than a panel of judges. Pet owners enter a photo of a dog, cat or other animal, then campaign among friends, coworkers and neighbors for public votes. The Globe, a Missouri newspaper publishing at joplinglobe.com, runs the ballot through Second Street, the contest platform behind many publisher reader-vote programs.

Everything about the setup is local. The entries are pets from the region the Globe covers, the votes come from its readership, and the midsummer window gives the campaign stretch a community feel that a statewide ranking would not have. Because the ballot is a photo vote rather than a written form, the picture itself does much of the persuading, and support has to be rallied outside the ballot, which is why pet owners in Joplin treat the contest as a summer social event as much as a competition.

The fixed facts about the program are gathered below.

The Dated Record for the Cutest Pet Contest in Joplin

Editions of the Cutest Pet Contest are confirmed for 2024 and 2025, both published by the Joplin Globe on its Second Street hosting. The 2025 ballot carried the dates June 26 through July 27, 2025, which places the contest squarely in midsummer, and the 2024 edition keeps its own page at the address ending in 2024-Cutest-Pet-Contest. Both editions ran under the same organization account on the platform.

What the Globe has not published alongside these editions is a category breakdown or any stated limit on how many votes one person may cast; the ballot's live page is where those terms appear, so confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

For planning purposes, the useful habit is to treat the summer slot as the expectation and the printed dates as the fact. Each edition has carried its own opening and closing days, the 2025 window being June 26 to July 27 while the 2024 page stands separately, and nothing in the published promotion data fixes a future edition's dates in advance.

Casting a Vote on the Joplin Globe Pet Ballot

On the Joplin Globe's pet ballot, the work a supporter does is a plain public click on a photo entry. A supporter opens the ballot at joplinglobe.secondstreetapp.com, browses the photo entries submitted to the Joplin Globe's contest, and logs a vote for a favorite. The promotion type behind the ballot, UGCVotingPhoto, is Second Street's photo-voting format, which means the entries are pictures rather than written nominations, and the ranking is built entirely from the votes supporters log during the window.

What the ballot does not state in its promotion data is whether voters need to register an email or sign in before a vote registers, or how often the same supporter may return. Those terms are enforced on the live page when it runs, and they are the details a campaigner should read before planning asks.

Because the votes come from the public at large, an entry's standing depends on how widely its owner can reach people who will actually follow through. A photo circulated through a local Facebook group or a workplace email thread tends to collect more follow-through than a photo left sitting on a personal feed, since the Globe hosts and publishes the tally without steering it.

Where the Cutest Pet Contest Sits Among Joplin Globe and Missouri Ballots

Within the Globe's own contest calendar on Second Street, the pet ballot shares space with several other promotions. The 2026 Favorites Of the Four States ran as a nomination-and-voting ballot from March 16 through June 20, 2026, covering best-of categories for the region. The same organization also runs sweepstakes, including a 2026 Q4 $15,000 Sweepstakes scheduled from November 2 through December 9, 2026, and it has listed an Annual Cutest Pet Contest 2026 for July 23 through August 28, 2026, which points to the pet contest holding its summer slot.

Beyond Joplin, Missouri readers have other public-vote programs of a similar shape. The Best of Southwest Missouri runs a best-of ballot for its own part of the state, while the Columbia Missourian Reader's Choice Awards and Columbia MO CommunityVotes serve the Columbia market under different publishers.

The Cutest Pet Contest differs from all of these in vertical. It is a pet photo vote rather than a business or reader-favorites ranking, and its reach is the Joplin Globe's readership rather than a statewide list, so the competition inside it is between pets and their personal networks instead of between local merchants.

Strengthening Support for a Pet Entry in This Ballot

Support in this program is won outside the ballot, because the vote itself is a plain public click on a photo. Owners of entered pets do best when they give supporters a reason and a moment to act: posting the direct link to the 2025 Cutest Pet Contest page, asking at a time when Joplin readers are off work, and reminding the people who promised a vote before the window closes on July 27. The unpublished repeat-vote rule is another reason to keep asks honest, since a supporter pushed past what the ballot allows wastes the effort. For a fuller rundown of methods that work on photo ballots like this one, see how to get more votes online.