Monmouth County Community’s Choice Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Monmouth County Community's Choice Awards is and who runs it

The Monmouth County Community’s Choice Awards honors leading businesses and organizations across Monmouth County, New Jersey, through a public vote. Gannett / USA TODAY Network local paper organizes it, and the ballot lives on Your Choice Awards software at the address yourchoiceawards.com/monmouth. The organizer’s own description frames the program as a celebration of the county’s best-run enterprises, and its published text states that more than 450 businesses and organizations are recognized each year thanks to community involvement.

Structurally, the program runs in public phases. Supporters nominate favorites first, and once nominations close, the leading companies in each category advance to the voting round. The ballot site also carries an Awards Gala, a Winners Section, Business Resources and an FAQ, so the program extends past the online vote into an in-person event and a published results area.

For readers comparing Gannett ballots in the state, this is the Monmouth County edition of the Community’s Choice Awards format. It is a separate program from the Asbury Park Press Readers’ Choice, which serves that paper’s own audience, and from county ballots elsewhere in the state.

The dated record for the Monmouth County ballot

The Monmouth County Community’s Choice Awards has run in two confirmed cycles, 2025 and 2026. The organizer describes the program as annual, which fits a county best-of ballot that repeats each summer, and the 2026 cycle is dated in full on the ballot page itself.

The 2026 cycle runs in three dated phases. The Nomination Round ran June 9-30, 2026, and the page marks it as the point where everything starts. The Voting Round runs August 17-31, 2026, and opens only after nominations close, with the leading companies in each category moving forward. Winners are announced on November 19, 2026, once voting ends.

One gap sits behind those dates. The organizer prints a 25-category count and a sweepstakes tied to it, but the full roster of category names is not laid out on the page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

For 2027, nothing has been posted. The program’s history, with runs in 2025 and 2026 and an annual description from the organizer, points to a repeat, but the nomination and voting windows for the next cycle will only be known when the organizer publishes them on the ballot page.

How a supporter votes in the Monmouth County Community's Choice Awards

Supporting a Monmouth County business on this ballot takes two actions on the Your Choice Awards site: nominating and voting. During the nomination phase, supporters put forward their favorites across the program’s categories. The organizer’s published text adds an incentive at this stage: users who nominate their favorites in 25 or more categories are entered into a $250 sweepstakes.

Once the voting round opens, the mechanic is simple: a public ballot where each supporter may return once per day. The organizer caps voting at one daily vote for favorites, and that limit shapes everything about how support builds here. A business backed by people who come back each day of the window accumulates far more votes than one whose supporters show up a single time.

The sweepstakes incentive carries into voting as well. The published text says that anyone who votes in 25 or more categories is eligible for the sweepstakes. That gives supporters a reason to move through the whole ballot rather than stopping at one category, which spreads attention across many local businesses at once.

No account requirement, login rule or eligibility restriction appears in the organizer’s published program text for this ballot. The form shown during the voting round is the authority on how a vote is cast, and whatever rules it displays in August govern that cycle.

How this ballot sits beside its New Jersey neighbours

Monmouth County sits inside a crowded New Jersey best-of field, and this program has six named neighbours on this site. Within the same county, the Jersey Bites Monmouth County Readers’ Choice runs a food-focused ballot, so a Monmouth restaurant or cafe can appear on two public ballots in the same season. Within the same publisher family, the Asbury Park Press Readers’ Choice serves that paper’s audience, and the Best of Bergen program runs the identical format for Bergen County instead.

Three more programs round out the set. The Best of New Jersey ballot spans the whole state, the Best of Jersey Shore Contest serves the shore region, and the Bergen & Morris Top Dentists program is a health-vertical ballot rather than a general business one. Each program answers to its own organizer and carries its own rules, so support earned on one does not transfer to the others.

What distinguishes the Monmouth County Community’s Choice Awards is the combination of county scope, the Your Choice Awards host, and a fully dated 2026 cycle with nomination, voting and winners-announcement phases. A supporter deciding where to focus should start from which ballot their customers actually read, then work that ballot’s daily mechanic. Links to every sibling program appear in the related contests list below this guide.

Strengthening support for a Monmouth County nominee

Support in this program rewards consistency over bursts. Because each supporter's vote counts once per day, a business’s strongest asset is a base of customers who return daily across the August 17-31 window, and the $250 sweepstakes gives those customers an extra reason to keep voting in 25 or more categories. Email reminders, counter signs and social posts timed to the window’s opening day do more for a Monmouth County nominee than one last-day appeal, since every missed day is support the ballot does not bank.

The organizer’s own rules govern what outside help is acceptable, and the ballot page is where those terms appear, so read them before arranging any paid support. For methods that work on any public ballot, see our guide to getting more votes online, and for the service tiers available for this kind of contest, the buy votes online page lists the options.