Best of Monadnock Poll: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Best of Monadnock Poll is and who runs it

The Best of Monadnock Poll is the readers' choice awards program of The Monadnock Shopper News, a publication serving the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. The 2026 ballot presents itself as the publication's 20th Annual Readers' Choice Awards and invites readers to vote for their favorites among local shops, restaurants, services, and people.

Unlike the regional and statewide ballots it sits beside in this market, this poll runs on the publication's own web presence instead of a third-party contest platform: the live ballot is a Jotform form at https://form.jotform.com/253455238724057, and the organizer promotes it under the BestOfMonadnock.com address. Anyone who completes the form picks favorites across the ballot's categories, supplies a first name, last name and email address, and submits. The form states that the email field is only used to contact entrants who win the drawing.

The vertical is business-focused readers' choice, the same best-of format used across New Hampshire by other publications and community platforms. Monadnock is the market label both the publication and the poll carry, and this page's state slug is new-hampshire. The table below gathers the fixed identifiers a supporter or a nominating business needs.

Dated facts for the Best of Monadnock Poll

Confirmed editions of the Best of Monadnock Poll run in 2025 and 2026. The 2026 ballot bills itself as the 20th Annual Readers' Choice Awards, and an earlier supporter, HCS Services, publicly urged votes for the Best of Monadnock 2021 edition, which is the earliest edition evidence printed anywhere in this program's materials. The organizer's own 2024 announcement describes the poll as its annual readers' poll, and the next edition would be expected in 2027.

The 2026 window is dated in the Monadnock Shopper News's own announcement: voting began January 14 and the ballot stays open until February 21, 2026. The same announcement sets a public nomination round, encouraging members of the public to submit nominations by Saturday, January 31, 2026, so the cycle runs a nomination phase and then a voting phase.

What the organizer does not publish is the round structure for future cycles: the ballot page carries the current window but not the dates the 2027 nomination and voting rounds will open, so for those dates, confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

One more dated detail belongs here: the ballot states that everyone who votes online will be entered into a drawing for one of several local gift certificates, which gives the February 21 close a concrete stake for individual readers rather than businesses alone.

How a supporter votes on the Monadnock ballot today

The ballot is a single Jotform form on the organizer's site. A supporter opens https://form.jotform.com/253455238724057, fills in a first name, a last name and an email address, and then works through the category list. The Monadnock Shopper News fills its ballot with a long slate of categories in which to vote, covering lifestyle, services and shopping across the Monadnock region, and the form enforces a floor: a minimum of 15 selections must be made per ballot.

The stated per-voter rule comes from the organizer's Reader's Poll terms as quoted by a supporter: the Monadnock Shopper News Reader's Poll allows only one vote per category per reader. Combined with the 15-selection minimum, that means a completed ballot is a broad slate, not a single write-in for one business.

Submission closes on February 21, 2026, and the form adds an incentive for finishing: everyone who votes online is entered into a drawing for one of several local gift certificates. The email address the ballot collects exists for exactly that purpose, since the form notes it is only used to contact you if you win.

For a business supporter, the practical reading is that every backer you send to the ballot must fill out at least 15 selections, so instructions to your customers should name your category and suggest sensible other picks rather than a bare one-click ask.

How this ballot sits beside its New Hampshire neighbours

The Best of Monadnock Poll is one of several readers' choice programs this site follows in New Hampshire, and every one of them is run by a separate publisher. The nearest neighbours by format are the Best of Mount Washington Valley, the Best of the Lakes Region and the Best of the Seacoast, each a regional best-of ballot for a different part of the state.

Two statewide programs also accept Monadnock-region votes: Best of NH and its sibling listing Best of NH. A city-level option exists too, in CommunityVotes Manchester, which runs on the CommunityVotes platform for New Hampshire's largest city.

What separates the Monadnock ballot from all of them is its host and its history. It runs on the Monadnock Shopper News's own site, presented as a Jotform ballot rather than a contest platform, and its 2026 edition carries the 20th Annual Readers' Choice Awards label, a longer claimed lineage than the confirmed 2025 and 2026 editions suggest on paper. It is also the one that pays voters back, with the gift certificate drawing tied to completed online ballots.

Strengthening support in the Best of Monadnock Poll

Support in this poll is shaped by two printed rules: a minimum of 15 selections per ballot, and one vote per category per reader. A business asking customers to vote should therefore say which category to find them in, and remind each person that the ballot will not submit without at least 15 picks. Clear instructions beat volume, because a half-filled form never counts.

The Monadnock Shopper News has not published a rule sheet addressing outside voting help, automated voting software or bulk submissions for this poll. What is stated instead is the one-vote-per-category-per-reader term, so any push should stay within what an individual reader can honestly do on one ballot. Anyone weighing outside help should first read how to get more votes online for approaches that work within a public ballot's stated rules, and see award-vote support for how this ballot type is generally treated.