2025 MRT Readers' Choice: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes in the MRT Readers' Choice and why it matters to Midland

The 2025 MRT Readers' Choice is a ballot whose voters are ordinary readers of the Midland Reporter-Telegram, the daily newspaper covering Midland, Texas. The programme exists to let the community name its favourite businesses, services and professionals, which means the people casting votes are mostly customers: diners naming a restaurant, clients naming a salon, homeowners naming a contractor they actually hired.

That audience shapes the whole contest. A business cannot win by being known to a national panel or a judging committee; it wins by mobilising the people who already walk through its door. The newspaper describes the programme as an event designed to recognise and celebrate favourites in the Midland community, so every vote is a local endorsement, and the winners earn a mark of community trust they can display for the rest of the year.

For supporters, the practical consequence is that reach inside Midland matters more than reach anywhere else. A shop with a loyal local email list, a busy counter and an active social feed starts with a real advantage over an outsider with a bigger but less local following. The vote itself takes place on Second Street property belonging to the publisher, so supporters act on the newspaper's pages instead of being sent off to some separate contest website.

The table below pulls the programme's fixed details together.

The dated history: which editions ran and when

Two editions of the programme appear on the Second Street host: 2021 and 2025. The 2021 ballot sits at its own address on the same platform, and the 2025 ballot ran under the programme's current name. The newspaper describes the Readers' Choice as an annual event, and a 2026 edition under the name 2026 Midland Reporter-Telegram Readers' Choice also appears on the host, opening March 30 and closing June 6, 2026.

The 2025 edition, the one this page is named for, accepted nominations and votes from March 31 through June 14, 2025. It ran as a combined nomination and voting round, meaning the cycle paired a nomination phase with a voting phase instead of running a simple vote alone. Both the 2025 and 2026 rounds sat in the spring, which fits the annual description the newspaper gives.

What the published material does not settle is the category lineup for any given cycle. The newspaper has not printed the full list of categories, any per-supporter voting limit or the eligibility rules in the material behind this page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. That gap is normal for publisher ballots, where the rules live on the ballot page itself and may differ from one round to the next.

For a supporter planning ahead, the useful summary is this: expect a spring window, expect a nomination phase followed by voting, and let the live ballot page be the only authority on categories and limits once the next edition is posted.

How a supporter votes on the Second Street ballot

Voting happens on the newspaper's Second Street pages. The 2025 address is midlandreportertelegram.secondstreetapp.com under the programme name, and during an open round that page is where both nominations and votes are entered. Because this cycle pairs nominations with voting, a supporter arriving early writes in favourites, and one arriving later votes among the named entries.

The literal sequence is short. Open the ballot page. Read the categories listed for the current cycle. Nominate or vote as the screen directs, category by category. If the printed rules allow repeat visits, return on later days through the window. The 2025 round stayed open for well over two months, from the end of March to mid-June, so there was no need to cram every action into a single visit.

Two habits make a supporter's effort count. First, put each favourite in the correct category rather than guessing, because a nomination in the wrong slot helps nobody. Second, read the voting instructions on the ballot itself before assuming a daily return is allowed, since the per-supporter rule is printed there and may differ from what a friend remembers from a previous year.

Once a round closes, the ballot page stops accepting entries, as the 2025 page does now. Results and the next edition's opening are announced through the newspaper's own channels, so a supporter who wants to act early should follow the Midland Reporter-Telegram directly rather than waiting for the ballot to appear on its own.

How this ballot sits beside its Texas neighbours

Midland's ballot is one of several readers' choice programmes across Texas, each run by a different publisher in its own city. The nearest comparisons on this site are the Best of Austin Readers Poll, the Best of Dallas Readers' Choice, Best of El Paso, Best of Houston, Best of San Antonio and Best of Fort Worth.

What separates the MRT programme from all of them is scale of market. Those six cover the state's largest metros, while the Midland Reporter-Telegram serves a single West Texas city and the surrounding readership of its daily paper. A vote in the MRT ballot is therefore a denser signal: fewer total voters, but a higher share of them who are genuine local customers of the businesses on the ballot.

The mechanics differ too. The MRT round begins with write-in nominations on Second Street before any voting slate exists. A business that misses the nomination phase can find itself absent from the voting phase entirely, which makes early supporter action disproportionately valuable compared with a ballot that simply opens with a fixed list.

For a Midland business deciding where to spend effort, the choice is not really between these programmes. Only the MRT ballot reaches the newspaper's own Midland readers, and that is the audience whose votes translate into local recognition. The metro ballots reward businesses with reach in Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso or Fort Worth; this one rewards the favourite of Midland itself.

Strengthening support in the MRT Readers' Choice

Because this ballot opens with nominations, the first move for any Midland business is to get loyal customers to write its name in during the nomination phase, before voting even begins. A short email to past customers, a counter sign and a couple of social posts in the first week of the window do more than a late surge, because a business absent from the voting slate cannot be voted for at all.

Once voting opens, repeat the ask through every direct channel: receipts, appointment reminders, a link in the email signature. The 2025 window ran from late March to mid-June, so there is time to ask customers again without pressuring anyone. Keep the ask specific, naming the category, because supporters who know exactly where to vote finish the job faster.

On outside help, the organiser's rules are the boundary. The Midland Reporter-Telegram prints its voting rules on the ballot page, and support that conflicts with them puts an entry at risk, so read them before arranging anything beyond organic asks. For a fuller treatment of tactics that work within a ballot's own rules, see our guide on getting more votes online, and for the legal framing see whether buying votes is legal.