2026 CCA Best of Bend: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the CCA Best of Bend ballot is and who runs it

The 2026 CCA Best of Bend is a community choice ballot published by The Bulletin, the daily newspaper of Bend, Oregon, whose coverage area is Central Oregon. The printed title on the ballot page reads 2026 Community Choice Awards Best of the Best of Bend, which places the program in the best of readers choice tradition that newspapers across Oregon run under their own names.

Host duties sit with Second Street, the balloting platform behind bulletin.secondstreetapp.com. The 2026 ballot is registered there as a Ballot/NominationAndVotingBallot under The Bulletin's organization, meaning the form handles both the nomination stage and the voting stage rather than running them as separate published contests. The address for the 2026 ballot is bulletin.secondstreetapp.com/2026-CCA-Best-of-Bend, and it is a market in its own right rather than a chapter of a statewide ballot.

The facts table below pulls the program's fixed details into one place. Everything in it comes from the ballot registration and the printed page title.

Because the ballot is a market level promotion inside The Bulletin's own promotion calendar, it sits alongside sweepstakes the paper runs rather than answering to any outside awards body. That matters when a supporter wants to know who sets the rules: The Bulletin does, and it publishes them where it publishes the form.

The dated history of Best of Bend editions

Two editions of the program are documented. The 2025 edition ran from April 16 to July 15, 2025, at a matching Second Street address, and the 2026 edition ran from April 13 to July 11, 2026. Both windows are closed as of now, and both carried the same nomination and voting ballot type under The Bulletin's account on bulletin.secondstreetapp.com.

The shape of those two runs is worth reading carefully. Both opened in mid April, and both closed in July, so the program has so far been a spring and early summer fixture in Bend. A 2027 edition has not been announced on any page The Bulletin publishes, and the closest statement the published dates support is that the paper has run the ballot in consecutive years. If The Bulletin adds a 2027 round, the address pattern it has used so far suggests it would appear under the same Second Street account.

One more dated fact belongs here: the 2026 window opened only days before a separate Bulletin sweepstakes began, which shows how tightly the paper schedules promotions on one host. That sweepstakes is a different program and stays outside this page's scope.

What the published dates do not include is any category list, any per supporter vote limit and any eligibility wording, because The Bulletin has not printed those outside the ballot form itself. The categories, the cap and the fine print are things a supporter should confirm on the live ballot each cycle, since a new edition can carry a new set of both.

How a supporter votes in the Best of Bend ballot

A supporter takes part through the Second Street form at The Bulletin's ballot address. Because the ballot type combines nominations with voting, the form presents whichever stage is live when the supporter arrives: during the open window that has meant either writing a business in or selecting one already listed, then submitting the choice. The form itself carries the instructions for the stage in progress, so the reliable sequence is to open the ballot, read the category list as printed there, and follow the submit button's prompts.

The window matters more than the method. In 2026 the form accepted participation from April 13 through July 11, and in 2025 from April 16 through July 15. Outside those dates the ballot sits closed, and arriving late leaves nothing to click. A supporter or business owner who wants to take part in a future edition should watch The Bulletin's own channels in the spring, because that is when the paper has opened the ballot both times so far.

On limits: nothing The Bulletin publishes about this program states how often one person may submit, whether an email address is required, or whether repeat submissions are filtered. The live form enforces whatever rule applies, and it is the only place the rule is stated. Supporters who see a prompt for an email or a verification step during submission should treat that prompt, not any outside description, as the operative rule.

Businesses nominated on the ballot can take part in their own promotion of their listing, and the mechanics for that are the same form, the same window and the same printed categories.

Where Best of Bend sits among Oregon readers choice ballots

Bend's ballot is one of several Oregon readers choice programs with their own organizers, and the nearest neighbours give the market its shape. In Bend itself, the Bend Magazine Readers' Choice Awards runs as a separate program from a separate publisher, so a business nominated on The Bulletin's ballot gains nothing on that one and vice versa. Each answers to its own organizer on Second Street or another host.

Elsewhere in the state, Best of Portland covers the largest city, Best of Eugene and the Eugene Community's Choice Awards cover the southern Willamette Valley, the Best of the Mid-Valley Community's Choice Awards covers the mid Willamette Valley, and the Coast Weekend Readers' Choice Awards covers Astoria on the north coast. None of those shares a ballot with Best of Bend.

What makes the Bend program distinct is its combination: a newspaper publisher whose coverage area is Central Oregon, a nomination and voting ballot on a single Second Street form, and a spring window that has closed in July both times it has run. A supporter moving between Oregon ballots therefore has to read each program's rules fresh, because a rule that applies on the Portland ballot tells a Bend supporter nothing. The practical takeaway is to bookmark The Bulletin's ballot address and check it when the spring window approaches.

Strengthening support for a Best of Bend listing

A business on the Best of Bend ballot works a market that behaves like other newspaper readers choice ballots: the voting base is the paper's local readership, and the window runs from April into July. Support that travels well here is direct and local. Ask regular customers in person, add the ballot link to invoices and email signatures, and post about the listing while the window is actually open, since a push after July 11 lands on a closed form.

What The Bulletin says about outside help is printed on the ballot itself, not in a standing policy document published anywhere else. That makes reading the form's own rules the first step before spending anything on promotion, because the organizer's stated rules are what decide whether support counts. For general reading on how newspapers' ballots handle support and what outside help typically involves, see our votes guide, and for the wider question of paid support on public ballots see the award votes page.

Timing matters as much as volume. Both documented windows ran roughly three months, which rewards a business that spreads reminders across the whole window instead of concentrating everything near the close, when the form is busiest and any submission problem is hardest to fix.