South Jersey Community's Choice Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the South Jersey Community's Choice Awards is and who runs it

South Jersey residents, not a judging panel, decide this awards program. The South Jersey Community's Choice Awards honors the businesses and organizations of the South Jersey area of New Jersey through a two-round community ballot, and it runs under the Gannett / USA TODAY Network banner on Your Choice Awards, the publisher's dedicated community-awards host. Among New Jersey ballots it belongs to the best-of family: rather than judging entries, it puts the decision in the hands of local residents, who nominate the companies they value and then vote among the leaders in each category.

The market it covers is the South Jersey region, anchored to the Vineland market label, with the program's own description pointing at Camden, Burlington, Gloucester and Atlantic counties. That gives the ballot a distinctly local shape: the categories reward the restaurants, shops and service companies that neighbors already use, and the program describes itself as a spotlight on the establishments that make the South Jersey area stand out.

Facts at a glance

Everything on the ballot runs through that one address, which makes it the single place to watch for a new cycle's dates, category listing and winner announcements.

The dated timeline for this awards program

Two confirmed cycles exist for the South Jersey Community's Choice Awards, 2025 and 2026. The organizer's own promotion of the 2025 cycle read, "The South Jersey Community's Choice Awards are back for 2025!", and the program describes itself as annual, so the two years on file sit inside a stated yearly cadence. When the calendar turns again, a 2027 run is what the pattern points toward.

The 2026 calendar is fully dated on the ballot page. The nomination round ran July 9-30, 2026, and the page's framing is simple: "It all begins with nominations." Once nominations closed, the top companies in each of the ballot's categories moved forward into phase two, the voting round, which ran September 16-30, 2026. After voting ended, winners were announced November 21, 2026. The prior cycle closed on a different rhythm: in 2025, results were announced December 13, which shows the reveal date can shift from year to year rather than being fixed to one week of the calendar.

Two things the ballot page does not print are the full list of category names and the eligibility fine print for nominees and voters; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. A business planning an entry in a specific slot has to read the exact roster off the live page when the nomination round opens.

How a supporter votes in the South Jersey Community's Choice Awards today

The mechanic is a two-phase public vote, and the host for this ballot is Your Choice Awards. Phase one is nominations: during the nomination window, residents put forward the South Jersey companies and organizations they want on the ballot. When nominations close, the leading companies in every category advance into phase two, the voting round, where the community decides the winners.

During voting, the rule that governs every supporter is the daily limit: users can vote up to once a day for their favorites. That single line shapes everything a campaign does in this program. Support from the same person on separate days of the window each counts, which is why the businesses that do well here are the ones whose customers build a habit of returning through the whole round rather than voting once and forgetting.

To cast a vote, head to yourchoiceawards.com/southjersey/ while the round is open, work through the category listing spanning the South Jersey business roster, and select a favorite. The program's own pitch for the format is that it covers everything "from trendy hotspots to hidden gems," so a small operator can sit on the same ballot as a well-known name.

Two details the ballot page leaves unstated are whether voting requires signing in and how the host treats shared devices within the once-a-day rule. Both are answered on the live page when the round is open, and both matter to anyone coordinating a group of voters, so read the instructions shown on the ballot before the campaign starts.

How this ballot sits beside its New Jersey neighbours

The South Jersey Community's Choice Awards is one of six New Jersey best-of programs on this site, and it is worth knowing where the boundaries fall. Nearest in structure is Best of Bergen Community's Choice Awards, a sibling from the same Your Choice Awards tradition that serves Bergen County in the state's northeast, while this program carries the Camden, Burlington, Gloucester and Atlantic county area in the south. The two share a publisher family and a platform, but a business cannot substitute one ballot's support for the other's.

The other neighbours answer to different publishers or wider footprints. Best of New Jersey runs at the statewide level, Best of Jersey Shore Contest takes the shore communities, and Asbury Park Press Readers' Choice is a Gannett paper ballot for the Monmouth and Ocean shore market. On the niche side, Bergen & Morris Top Dentists and Jersey Bites Monmouth County Readers' Choice narrow to a single vertical, dental health and county dining respectively, where this program's roster spans the general business field.

What makes this one distinct in the set is the combination of a Gannett publisher, the Your Choice Awards host, and a four-county South Jersey reach. A supporter backing a Vineland-area restaurant or a Camden County service company is on this ballot, not the shore or statewide ones, and each program's windows run on its own calendar.

Strengthening support for a South Jersey entry

Because the ballot counts one vote per user per day, the strongest legitimate play in this program is a daily-return campaign: ask every customer to bookmark your category page and vote each day of the September round, and remind them at checkout, on receipts and on social channels. A business that turns 50 regulars into daily voters carries far more weight in this format than a burst of one-time clicks, because the once-a-day rule means sustained participation is what the ballot is built to measure.

The organizer's side of the line matters too. The vote rule is published and explicit about the daily limit, and any approach that pushes a single user past it, or relies on automated voting, puts those votes at deletion and the entry at risk. Keep the campaign inside what the ballot itself allows: real people, voting once a day, for a real South Jersey business. The practical tactics that fit that frame are gathered in our get-more-votes guide, and the award-ballot specifics are at the award votes page.