Joplin Globe Favorites of the Four States: How Voting Works & How to Win

Five rounds, 2022 through 2026: the deepest confirmed history in this group

Favorites of the Four States has outlasted most of the readers'-choice ballots covered alongside it: five confirmed rounds, 2022 through 2026, hosted by the Joplin Globe at joplinglobe.secondstreetapp.com. The earliest date the page ties to a start is March 11, 2022; the newest round, in 2026, closed June 20.

That five-round span is also where the certainty runs out. Day-level dates for the 2023, 2024, and 2025 rounds aren't spelled out in what's published, only that each of those years happened, somewhere between the March 11 start recorded for 2022 and the June 20 close recorded for 2026. No category list appears either, and no vote cap, leaving a business to guess at the shape of the ballot until nominations actually open.

The ballot page lists no category roster and no per-supporter limit; confirm on the live ballot each cycle, since five straight years of continuing doesn't by itself guarantee either one shows up next time.

A single newspaper's own ballot, not one of Missouri's larger metro polls

The Joplin Globe runs this ballot on its own, not through a network shared with other Missouri outlets. Missouri's other readers'-choice polls mostly belong to a different publisher entirely, each tied to its own metro.

None of those other programs trade judges or share a result with Joplin's own ballot, so a strong showing here means nothing on their scoreboards. A business signed up for several of these at once is running separate campaigns under separate rulebooks, even where the entry forms look alike.

What five years of history does and doesn't tell you

Running continuously since 2022 shows the Joplin Globe keeps bringing this ballot back year after year, something a first-year program simply can't claim. What it doesn't settle is whether a category breakdown or a per-voter limit will finally show up; that detail still lives only on the live page, worth a fresh look each time a round opens.

Joplin and the four-state region, without borrowed geography

Joplin is the city the Joplin Globe names for this ballot, and the page never widens that boundary, "Four States" in the title notwithstanding. No county list and no note on which nearby customers qualify appear anywhere on it.

A separate pet-photo vote and seasonal sweepstakes also cycle through joplinglobe.secondstreetapp.com at other times of year, unrelated promotions with their own entry rules and nothing to do with Favorites of the Four States.

How far a nomination actually reaches beyond Joplin, whatever the "Four States" name implies, is left for the Joplin Globe alone to define, and its own page stops at naming the city. A business just across a state line, drawing customers from the Joplin area, has no printed rule either welcoming it in or ruling it out.

Building a push on a program with five years behind it

Five confirmed rounds give a Joplin business a longer track to study than a brand-new ballot would offer, even without a printed category list or vote cap to plan around. The practical step stays the same regardless: line up real customers willing to click through to joplinglobe.secondstreetapp.com before a round closes, then reach out to them again rather than assuming one message did the job.

That longer history raises the stakes somewhat. Real supporters, asked more than once, are what actually carries a ballot like this, and a program the Joplin Globe has kept running since 2022 has more standing to protect than a first-time entry would. Fake or automated activity that inflates a total puts the whole nomination at risk no matter how many rounds preceded it. Is buying votes legal sorts out which tactics stay inside the rules and which don't, worth reading before spending real budget. Buying votes online covers how outside support typically works for a nominate-then-vote ballot, and award-vote campaign planning covers the readers'-choice format this ballot follows.