Readers Choice Awards 2026: How Voting Works & How to Win

A small-city daily ballot in a state of big readers polls

North Carolina already has best-of ballots that speak for whole metros and for the state at large, so it would be easy to assume the Readers Choice Awards 2026 is another entry in that crowd. It is not. This program belongs to The Daily Courier, the daily newspaper of Forest City, and its reach is the paper's own readership rather than a statewide audience. That difference shapes everything about how the ballot works, who sees it and how a business competes in it.

The organizer runs the ballot on Second Street, the contest platform whose app domain here is thedigitalcourier.secondstreetapp.com. The same account carries the newspaper's sweepstakes and photo-voting promotions, but the Readers Choice ballot is the one promotion of the set built as a NominationAndVotingBallot, meaning nomination and voting share a single form. The confirmed 2026 address is thedigitalcourier.secondstreetapp.com/Readers-Choice-Awards-2026.

For a business in the Forest City area, the practical consequence is a smaller, more attentive voting pool. A statewide ballot buries a local shop among hundreds of entries; a daily-paper poll puts it in front of neighbours who already know the name. The facts below set out the program as the source material confirms it.

The confirmed edition history behind the 2026 ballot

Three editions of this program are on the books: 2023, 2024 and 2026. Each ran under its own Second Street address, and the surviving links are the 2023 ballot at /Readers-Choice-Awards-2023 and the 2024 ballot at /Readers-Choice-Awards-2024-2. The gap between 2024 and 2026 is visible in the edition years themselves; whether an edition ran in 2025 is not stated anywhere in the material held for this program, so treat the run as confirmed only in the years listed.

The 2026 edition is the best documented. Its window opened on May 4, 2026 and closed on June 23, 2026, a spring placement consistent with the promotion dates attached to the earlier editions. The ballot is now closed, and the program's next expected edition is 2027.

What the listing leaves out deserves equal attention alongside what it confirms. The Daily Courier has not published the category roster for this ballot, nor any per-supporter voting limit or eligibility terms, in the material attached to this listing; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Those details live on the Second Street form itself while an edition is open, and they are the first things a business should read before planning any push, because the organizer's own terms govern what support counts.

How a supporter votes on the Second Street form

Voting follows the usual Second Street flow, adapted to a nomination-and-voting structure. A supporter opens the ballot address, moves through the categories shown on the page, and inside each category either selects a listed business or enters a write-in where the form allows it. Because nomination and voting sit on the same promotion, a supporter who wants a business added can often nominate it directly rather than waiting for a separate nomination phase.

Submission happens on the form itself, before the closing date. The 2026 window closed on June 23, so the live action today is reading rather than voting; the form now sits closed with the rest of the 2026 edition. When the 2027 ballot opens, the same flow applies, and the newspaper will publish its dates on the live page.

The return rule deserves a plain warning. Second Street ballots commonly allow repeat visits across a window, but the exact per-supporter rule for this program has not been printed in the material held here, and no summary can stand in for the organizer's terms. The rule text printed on the live ballot is the authority. A supporter planning a daily routine should read it first, and a business coaching its customers should point them to it rather than to assumptions carried over from other contests.

Where this ballot sits among its North Carolina neighbours

Set the Readers Choice Awards beside the other North Carolina programs on this site and its character comes into focus. Best of North Carolina addresses the whole state, and the Charlotte Magazine Best of the Best Awards speak for the state's largest metro. Both play for scale. The Daily Courier's ballot plays for proximity: its voters are the people who read the paper over coffee in Forest City.

Two siblings are closer structural cousins. The Daily Reflector Best Of Pitt County is also a daily-newspaper readers poll, and the Fayetteville Community's Choice Awards shares the community-paper framing. The Best of Chowan County shows how small a market these ballots can serve, while the Carolina Great Pyrenees Rescue Calendar Photo Contest sits outside the business best-of pattern entirely.

What makes this program distinct within that set is its nomination-and-voting form on a single promotion, its spring window, and its three confirmed editions of 2023, 2024 and 2026. A business deciding where to invest a season's outreach should weigh the small, local pool here against the bigger, more anonymous pools elsewhere in the state.

Building support ahead of the 2027 window

With the 2026 ballot closed, the useful work for a Forest City business is preparation, and the target year is 2027. Start with the nomination half of the form: because this ballot folds nomination into voting, a business that enters the window already known to its customers starts with an advantage that no late push can match. Collect testimonials, keep your listing details current, and ask satisfied customers to watch for the ballot's opening.

When the window opens, organic methods travel further in a small readership than in a metro poll, because the same customers vote in many categories and talk to each other. Our guide to getting more votes online covers those methods in detail. If purchased support is part of your plan, check the terms The Daily Courier prints on its ballot before committing, and see how award-vote support works; no outside help overrides the newspaper's own rules, and the ballot's terms are the final word on what counts.