For The Wildlife Photographer Of The Year Peoples Choice Award: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the KJRH wildlife photography award is and who runs it

KJRH-TV, a television station broadcasting to Oklahoma, presents the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Award as an online public vote carried directly on the broadcaster's kjrh.com domain, with no outside contest platform involved. The ballot sits under the title "Vote for the 2023 Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Award," and the page frames the choice in a single line: "These images are stunning! Which are your favorites?" The station's site footer carries a Scripps Media copyright line, so the award belongs to a Scripps-owned local news operation, not to a chamber of commerce or a magazine.

In vertical terms this is a best-of style ballot, but unlike the multi-category readers' contests common in the state, this one is a single award: readers pick their favorite wildlife photograph from a set of finalists. The program name points at the international Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, and the People's Choice Award is the branch of it that a public ballot decides. Everything a supporter needs sits on one page: the images, the vote action and the deadline. That simplicity is the program's defining feature, and it is also why the station's own page, not a platform dashboard, is the only place to verify the details of any given cycle.

The dated editions and the voting window

Two editions of the award are confirmed: 2023 and 2024. The 2024 cycle is the one with a fully dated window. Voting opened on Nov. 29, 2023 and closed on Jan. 31, 2024, and the station's own page urged readers to vote for their favorite before Jan. 31, 2024. That gives the ballot a window spanning the turn of the year, opening in late November and closing at the end of January.

The station has not published a day-level schedule for any cycle beyond that, and the ballot page prints no list of award categories and no year for the next round; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. What the confirmed editions do establish is a pattern worth planning around: a winter ballot, live through the holiday season and settled by the end of January. The page's text also points to a winner announcement after voting closes, with honorable mentions alongside the top image.

For anyone supporting a photograph in a future cycle, the practical takeaway is that the window is long enough to build support steadily but short enough that the final weeks decide the outcome. Because only the 2023 and 2024 editions are confirmed, any claim about a 2025 or later ballot should wait for the station's own page rather than rest on assumption.

How a supporter votes in the People's Choice ballot

Voting here takes only a few minutes. A supporter visits the ballot page on kjrh.com, looks through the finalist wildlife photographs, chooses a favorite and casts the vote before the window closes. The rule that shapes everything else is the one-vote limit: the award's voting guidance states plainly, "Beware, you only get one vote."

That single figure changes the arithmetic of support. In a ballot where each person votes once, a photograph cannot be pushed over the line by the same supporters returning day after day; every additional vote has to come from an additional person. It also means the choice itself carries weight, since there is no second chance to correct it. The page asks the question in the supporter's own voice, "Which are your favorites?", which signals that several images can appeal to one viewer but only one can receive that viewer's vote.

No account requirement, login step or voter eligibility rule is printed on the ballot page, so the practical instruction is the simplest one: visit the page, look at the images, vote once, and do it before Jan. 31 in the confirmed cycle. Anyone planning support for a photograph should treat the one-vote rule as the fixed constraint around which every other decision, from outreach to timing, has to be built.

How this award sits beside Oklahoma's other public votes

Oklahoma's public-vote landscape on this site holds several sibling ballots alongside this award, and each one belongs to its own publisher. 405 Magazine Best of 405, Best of OKC, Best of OKC (Oklahoma Gazette) and Best of the 405 are all readers'-choice style contests in the state's capital market, while the Norman Transcript Readers' Choice serves Norman and Best of Claremore serves Claremore.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Award stands apart from all of them in three ways. First, it is run by a television station, KJRH-TV, rather than by a magazine or a newspaper. Second, it is a single award with one question, favorite wildlife photograph, instead of a long roster of business categories. Third, the ballot lives on kjrh.com itself, the broadcaster's own domain, rather than on a dedicated contest platform.

Those differences matter to a supporter because the tactics do not transfer cleanly. A business ballot rewards broad category coverage and repeat daily visits where the rules allow; a one-vote photography award rewards reaching more distinct people once each. Links to the sibling ballots are here for readers comparing Oklahoma's public votes: 405 Magazine Best of 405, Best of OKC, Norman Transcript Readers' Choice and Best of Claremore.

Building support under the one-vote rule

Support in this award is a reach problem, not a frequency problem, because the one-vote rule caps every supporter at a single choice. The station publishes no statement about outside voting help for this ballot, so the safe reading is that the organizer's own page is the only authority on what counts toward the result.

Practical support means finding more people who care about wildlife photography and asking each of them to vote once: photography clubs, conservation groups, social feeds and personal networks. Our votes guide covers outreach methods that work across public ballots, and our award votes page explains the paid option for award-style ballots generally. Whatever route a supporter takes, the KJRH ballot page and its published window remain the terms of the contest.