Call & Times Community Choice 2026: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Call & Times Community Choice ballot is and who runs it

Call & Times Community Choice 2026 is a reader-voted awards program organized by RI Media Group, the media company whose Westerly Sun masthead serves Westerly, Rhode Island. The title joins the two audience marks it speaks to, and supporters reach it through the publisher's own subdomain on Second Street rather than through a standalone campaign site.

Second Street is the hosting platform, and the promotion is typed there as a Ballot/NominationAndVotingBallot, which blends a nomination stage with a voting stage instead of splitting them into two separate contests. The vertical is best-of: readers choose favorites among local offerings, the format most newspaper groups use for community choice programs.

Key facts

Because the publisher keeps the ballot on its own domain, everything a supporter needs, from the category list to any rules text, sits on that Second Street page. This reference covers what is confirmed about the program's structure and dates, and points to the live ballot wherever the organizer is the only source.

The confirmed dates: which editions ran and when the current window closes

Three editions of this program are confirmed: 2024, 2025 and 2026. Each ran as its own promotion on the westerlysun.secondstreetapp.com host, and each kept its own address, including dedicated pages for the 2025 and 2024 cycles that remain reachable alongside the current one.

The 2026 edition carries the Ballot/NominationAndVotingBallot type on Second Street, with a confirmed window from July 18 through September 14, 2026. That puts most of the competition in late summer, the same stretch when the publisher's other seasonal promotions, including a sweepstakes cycle, run on the same domain.

Two cautions belong here. First, no 2027 cycle has been announced, so any assumption the ballot simply reopens next July is the reader's, not the organizer's. Second, the rule set is thinner than the date list: RI Media Group has not printed the category roster, any per-supporter vote cap, or eligibility terms in any of its published promotion text, so the live ballot settles all three of those questions on its own.

In practice the dates above are the firm part of the history, and everything else on the ballot is decided by RI Media Group cycle by cycle. A program can hold its window shape for three straight years and still change its categories, its vote limits, or its eligibility wording in the fourth, which is why the live page outranks any summary, including this one.

How a supporter votes today, step by step

Voting starts at the ballot address on Second Street. The 2026 promotion is open during its confirmed window, so a supporter arriving now reaches a live ballot rather than a closed one. Because the ballot combines nomination and voting, the flow depends on the stage each category is in: categories taking nominations ask for a nominee to be entered or confirmed, while categories past that stage present the field to choose from.

That two-stage shape is what separates this program from a plain vote-only poll. A supporter cannot assume that typing a business name works everywhere; some categories will show picklists and others will accept write-ins, and the page itself signals which is which. RI Media Group keeps the category list on the ballot itself, so scrolling the live page is how a supporter sees the full field.

On frequency, the same principle holds. Whether one person may return daily, weekly, or once per category is a rule the organizer sets and displays on its own ballot, not something a summary can settle. Read the instructions shown at submission, since Second Street ballots typically restate the per-voter rule at that point.

Finally, the close. September 14, 2026 is the confirmed end of the window, and votes arriving after a ballot closes do not count toward it. Supporters planning a late push should treat the final day as the deadline it is, because the organizer controls the ballot and can close it without notice to outside guides.

Where this ballot sits among Rhode Island's reader-vote programs

Within Rhode Island's reader-vote scene, this program has a publisher of its own. Best of Rhode Island, the Motif Bartender Awards, Best of RI from Rhode Island Monthly, CommunityVotes Providence, RI Food Fights People's Choice, and Newport Restaurant Week each answer to different organizers, while the Call & Times ballot belongs to RI Media Group and its Westerly Sun audience in Westerly.

The nearest neighbor is inside the publisher's own house: Reader's Choice 2026 runs on the same Second Street domain under the same organization, opening on July 16 and closing on September 14. The two promotions overlap almost entirely in time, so a supporter landing on the domain should check which ballot they are on, since the programs are separate and a vote cast on one does nothing for the other. A separate SRI / IND Readers' Choice 2026 ballot also runs on that host with the same July 16 start.

What distinguishes this program is its anchor: a single daily newspaper's home market in Westerly. Several of the state's better-known ballots center on Providence or statewide audiences, while this one follows the Westerly Sun readership. For a local business that means the field is the paper's own audience rather than the whole state, so support built from actual customers there travels further than a broad statewide push.

For comparison across the state's ballots, each sibling page on this site carries its own dates and fine print, and none of them substitutes for another's.

Strengthening support in this ballot without risking it

Support here flows through one channel: the Second Street ballot during the confirmed window. Anything that brings real people to that page, a counter sign, a receipt insert, an email to your list, a social post with the direct link, works with the organizer's design instead of against it. RI Media Group has not published special terms about outside help for this ballot, which makes the ordinary reading the safe one: votes from genuine supporters are what the format exists to collect, and methods that fabricate participation are what every publisher's ballot is built to distrust.

Because the program is anchored to Westerly, concentrate on the audience that actually votes here. Ask customers during the window while the ask is timely, and name the category you are competing in so nobody lands on the ballot unsure where to act. For a wider playbook, our guide to building vote counts covers the ground, and the ballot closes on September 14, 2026.