Tag Readers Choice Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

A Hudson Valley ballot run by the magazine that covers it

The Tag Readers Choice Awards is a best-of readers' ballot run by Chronogram Magazine, a lifestyle publication that describes itself as covering the Hudson Valley and Catskills with news on arts, food and drink, home and garden, wellness and local towns. The program is part of the magazine's Readers Choice family of coverage, and the ballot is hosted on chronogram.com, the organizer's own site, with no outside voting platform involved.

The market is regional rather than municipal. Chronogram's masthead and its awards coverage are addressed to readers across the Hudson Valley and Catskills, which means the businesses on the ballot come from the whole circulation area instead of a single city. The publication covers towns, events and lifestyle topics across that region, and the awards are framed by the publisher as an annual census of Hudson Valley affection.

For a supporter, that setup matters in two ways. First, the ballot is only ever one click from the magazine's regular readership, so the audience voting is the audience already reading the publication's coverage. Second, because Chronogram is both organizer and host, the windows, the results posts and any rules all live in one place rather than being split between a magazine and a platform vendor.

Facts at a glance

The dates that are published, and the ones that are not

The cycle has two confirmed phases. Chronogram's own media kit prints a nomination round from January 1 through February 15, followed by a voting round from April 1 through May 15. Those are the windows the organizer gives to advertisers and readers, and they define the whole rhythm of the program: readers nominate their favorites in the depth of winter, campaign and vote through spring, and see results posted at the start of summer.

The results themselves have landed in early July in both confirmed years. The education and learning winners post for 2025 is dated July 1, 2025, and the nature and the outdoors winners post for 2026 is dated July 1, 2026. Confirmed editions of the program cover 2025 and 2026, and Chronogram's awards coverage describes the series as having started in 2020 as a morale boost for local businesses that matured into a definitive popularity contest for the region.

What the organizer does not publish on the awards archive pages is the full category roster for a given cycle, any per-reader voting limit, and the eligibility rules for nominees; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The archive holds winners posts for individual categories, which shows the ballot spans many fields, but no page gathered here enumerates them. A reader planning a campaign should treat the open form as the authority on which categories are running and what constraints apply while the round runs.

How a reader actually takes part

Taking part follows the published windows literally. During the nomination phase, a reader opens the Readers Choice pages on chronogram.com and puts forward the businesses and favorites they want considered. That window closes on February 15, and anything not entered by then has no published route onto the ballot for that cycle.

When the voting round opens on April 1, the same pages carry the ballot itself. A supporter finds a category, selects the nominee they want to back, and submits the form. The form is served by the organizer's own site, so no account with a third-party voting platform is involved. How often one reader may cast votes, whether a login is required, and whether the form enforces a daily return are all details the organizer has not printed on its awards pages.

Between the two rounds there is a gap of about six weeks, from mid February to the start of April, when neither nominations nor votes are open. Businesses use that stretch to prepare campaigns; readers simply wait. Once voting closes on May 15 the ballot is shut, and the next published touchpoint is the winners coverage in the archives in early July.

For anyone backing a nominee, the practical sequence is: nominate early in January, confirm the nominee appears on the live form, then return through April and May while the round is open. Supporters looking to widen their reach can read our votes guide for campaign tactics that work across public ballots of this kind.

Where this ballot sits among New York's readers' choice programs

Chronogram's program is one of several best-of ballots in New York on this site, and its identity comes from its publisher and region rather than from a shared platform. Other New York programs include Best of Brooklyn, Best of Hudson Valley, The City's Best, Best of New York City, Best of Queens, Best of the Bronx and Best of Westchester.

Three things set the Chronogram ballot apart from its neighbors. First, geography: the New York City borough programs cover individual parts of the city, while this one addresses a region north of the city, the Hudson Valley and Catskills, so the two audiences barely overlap. Second, hosting: the voting form sits on the magazine's domain itself, where several other regional ballots run on dedicated voting platforms. Third, calendar: the two-round structure, a January nomination window and an April voting window, gives the program a longer public life than a single-round ballot.

For businesses deciding where to campaign, the choice among these programs is really a choice of audience. A Catskills inn or a Hudson Valley restaurant has a natural home here; a Brooklyn bakery is better served by the borough ballot that its own customers read. The Westchester and Hudson Valley programs sit closest geographically, but they answer to different publishers and are separate contests with separate ballots.

Strengthening support on this ballot

The windows are the whole game here. A nomination submitted between January 1 and February 15 puts a business on the ballot; a voting push concentrated between April 1 and May 15 decides the result. The six week gap in between is when a business can line up its own customers, write the ask, and prepare reminders so the spring round is not spent improvising.

Chronogram has published no contest terms on its awards pages, so there is no organizer statement here about outside help, purchased support or software-driven voting either way. That silence cuts both ways: nothing in what Chronogram publishes authorizes bulk purchased votes, and nothing defines what happens to them. What is certain is that the visible support comes from the magazine's own readership, so asks aimed at actual customers and local followers are the support a business controls.

If you are weighing outside services against that silence, start with the plain-language rundown at buying award votes, then judge the organizer's position for yourself on the live ballot. However a campaign is built, a win on this ballot is one claim, and turning it into revenue is a separate one.