For The Wildlife Photographer Of The Year Peoples Choice Award: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the KRTV People's Choice wildlife ballot is and who runs it

KRTV is the organizer here. The station, a television broadcaster serving Montana, publishes a public-vote ballot titled the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Award on its own website. The vertical is best-of in the broad sense: a ballot where the audience, not a jury, decides the outcome. But the subject is unusual for the format. Rather than asking readers to rank local plumbers or restaurants, KRTV presents finalist photographs from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year program and asks one direct question: which images are your favorites?

The host matters for how you interact with it. KRTV publishes this ballot on its own domain at krtv.com rather than handing it to a national contest vendor. That means the page you vote on is the station's own page, under the station's own control, with the station's own presentation of the finalist images. There is no outside platform whose interface you need to learn.

No city is attached to this program, so the page describes it at the state level: a Montana television station, a Montana audience, and a ballot that lives on the station's domain. The quick facts below gather what is confirmed.

The dated timeline: which editions ran and when voting closed

Two editions of this ballot are confirmed: 2023 and 2024. The 2023 edition is anchored by the ballot page itself, which was published under the title Vote for the 2023 Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Award. The 2024 edition is anchored by the voting window the station printed on that page, which asked supporters to vote for a favorite before Jan. 31, 2024. Together the two years establish the program as recurring rather than a one-time feature.

The 2024 window is the most precise dated fact available. Voting ran through the end of January, and the station's text ties the winner and honorable mentions to the period after supporters cast their votes. The station also noted that Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024 was open for entries and marked the program's 60th anniversary, which gives context for why the People's Choice ballot was live at that moment.

What remains unsettled is the next cycle. KRTV has not announced an edition year beyond 2024, and the day-level opening and closing dates for any future ballot are not printed anywhere the station has published so far; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The same caution applies to the ballot's category structure: the station has not printed a list of what supporters are choosing between beyond the finalist images themselves.

How a supporter votes on the KRTV ballot today

Voting here takes little effort. A supporter visits the ballot page on krtv.com, looks through the finalist photographs, and casts a vote for a favorite before the deadline the station prints on the page. The station's own framing is casual and inviting: the images are stunning, and the question is which are your favorites. There is no entry form, no nomination stage, and no business category to work through. One page, one choice, one deadline.

Because KRTV publishes the ballot on its own domain, the supporter's path is short. You do not create an account on a contest platform, you do not receive a confirmation email flow, and you do not work through a multi-round bracket. The station presents the images and collects the vote on the same page. For the 2024 edition, the only hard instruction was timing: vote before Jan. 31, 2024.

Two practical notes follow from that simplicity. First, the ballot page for a past edition may not carry the current cycle's images, so a supporter arriving mid-cycle should reach the live page through the station's site navigation rather than an old link. Second, the station has not printed any rule about repeat voting, so nothing on the ballot page says whether a single person may vote more than once. The live page governs both points in any given cycle.

How this ballot sits beside Montana's other public votes

Montana has a busy public-vote scene, and this ballot's neighbours are mostly business-oriented readers' choice contests. Best of Whitefish covers the Flathead Valley resort town's businesses. Best of Billings, run by the Billings Gazette, and Community Votes Billings both serve the state's largest city with nominate-then-vote formats. Gallatin's Greatest, from the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, and Bozeman's Choice, from Bozeman Magazine, cover the Gallatin Valley. Community Votes Bozeman rounds out the set. Each of those programs answers to its own publisher and runs on its own schedule.

This ballot differs from all of them in three ways. It is run by a television station rather than a newspaper or a contest network. Its subject is a single photography award rather than a roster of local business categories. And its window is short: a January voting period rather than a months-long spring or summer campaign. A supporter who enjoys voting in the business contests will find this one faster and more visual.

The shared thread is the public-vote mechanic itself. Every program in this set, from Best of Billings to Bozeman's Choice, hands the decision to the audience. If you follow Montana ballots broadly, the wildlife photography award is the art-side counterpart to the state's business readers' choice tradition, and it rewards the same habit: showing up during the window and voting.

Strengthening support for a favorite image in this ballot

Because this ballot asks for a single choice among finalist photographs, support campaigns look different from a business contest push. There is no business owner with a customer list to activate; the natural constituency is people who already love wildlife photography. Sharing the specific finalist image you want to win, with a direct link to the KRTV ballot page, is the most effective organic move, because it lets the photograph do the persuading.

Timing matters more here than on a long business ballot. The confirmed 2024 window closed Jan. 31, 2024, a span of weeks rather than months, so a reminder sent after the close is worth nothing. Build the ask around the deadline: first share when the ballot opens, then a reminder in the final days. The station has not published any statement about outside help or voting software for this ballot, so the only published rule a supporter can point to is the deadline itself.

For a fuller treatment of the tactics that work on public-vote ballots of this shape, read our guide to getting more votes online. It covers outreach that fits a short-window, single-choice format like this one, where every supporter you reach needs to act quickly and the ballot page itself is the only place a vote can be cast.