Cleburne Times-Review Best of the Best: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Cleburne Times-Review Best of the Best?

The Best of the Best is the reader-voted honors program of the Cleburne Times-Review, a Texas newspaper that runs its ballot under its own name on Second Street's balloting service. The paper sums the concept up in a single line used on its own materials: "The friendly competition is presented by the Cleburne Times-Review and recognizes the best businesses, individuals and organizations, as selected by its Johnson County readers."

That description settles several things at once. The organizer is the newspaper itself, not a chamber of commerce or an events company. The electorate is the paper's readership in Johnson County, which makes this a community-scale contest rather than a metro-wide spectacle. And the field spans businesses, individuals and organizations, so the ballot blends merchant categories with people and civic groups.

Second Street publishes each contest under the organizer's own tenant, and the 2026 ballot lives at that address under the header "2026 Best of the Best". Nothing in the paper's description mentions prizes, an awards ceremony or a results event; those details belong to the newspaper alone.

Which editions have run, and what does the 2026 schedule say?

Years on the calendar

Edition years published for the program are 2022, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Independent confirmation of the cadence came from Fort Worth Weekly in September 2022, which wrote that "the Cleburne Times Review has an annual best-of edition called Best of the Best." The year list jumps from 2022 to 2024, so anyone tracing the program's history should treat each edition as its own event instead of assuming an unbroken run.

The 2026 rhythm

The current ballot spells out its schedule in a single sentence: "Nominations are June 7-21, with voting from July 1-15." June therefore belongs to putting names forward, and July belongs to the count, with both months falling in 2026 to match the year in the ballot's address.

The category lineup behind those dates is the program's largest unanswered detail; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. No results date or prize summary travels with the printed schedule either.

How does a supporter take part in the 2026 vote?

Everything happens on the ballot page at https://cleburnetimes-review.secondstreetapp.com/2026-Best-of-the-Best/. The ballot is built as a nomination-and-voting ballot, meaning the same address serves both phases: readers nominate between June 7 and June 21, then return to vote between July 1 and July 15.

During the voting round the practical routine is short. Open the page, move through the sections it presents for 2026, mark a choice wherever you have an opinion, and send the ballot in. Whatever identification the platform asks for surfaces at the point of voting; the Times-Review has not described a separate signup anywhere on its published schedule.

Return visits are the open question. The paper publishes no stated ceiling on how often a reader may weigh in during the July stretch, and no eligibility terms accompany the ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Anyone campaigning hard for a local favorite should read what the live page says about frequency before building a plan around coming back day after day.

A phone handles the page exactly as a desktop does, since the ballot is an ordinary website rather than an app store download.

Where does this ballot sit among Texas reader polls?

Reader-choice balloting runs large across Texas, and the Cleburne Times-Review's program holds down its community-sized corner of that map. Sibling programs listed alongside it include the Best of Dallas Readers' Choice, Best of Houston, Best of San Antonio, the Best of Austin Readers Poll, Best of El Paso and Fort Worth Magazine's Best of Fort Worth.

The five big-city polls each anchor a single metro: Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Houston and San Antonio. Fort Worth Magazine's entry is the magazine-run neighbor to the north, while this ballot is the newspaper-run one, carried under the Cleburne Times-Review's own masthead.

The difference that matters most is the electorate. Where a metro poll draws from an entire urban population, this contest asks the paper's Johnson County readership to decide, so the pool of possible voters is bounded by that readership. For a nominee, that changes the arithmetic: fewer total votes in play during the July 1-15 count means an organized local push carries further weight than it would in a sprawling metro-wide tally.

Winning here therefore depends on depth of local goodwill rather than sheer reach. A merchant known on a first-name basis around town can stand beside a far larger regional brand, because the count rewards whatever the paper's own readers will take the trouble to mark on the ballot.

How can a nominee's supporters make their votes count here?

Support work in this contest begins before the vote does. Because nominations run June 7-21, a business that wants a place on the 2026 ballot needs its customers asking for it during that stretch; a favorite that misses the nomination window cannot collect votes in July at all.

That two-round design gives a campaign two distinct jobs. In the June stretch the job is visibility: remind customers that putting the business forward by name is what earns it a July slot. When the voting round opens, the job shifts to turnout among people who already know exactly where the ballot lives.

Once the July 1-15 round opens, the compressed schedule favors campaigns that start immediately instead of easing in. Sharing the direct ballot link, reminding loyal customers in person and by email, and timing reminders for the opening stretch all fit the way this ballot is built. The Times-Review posts no published stance on coordinated pushes, so keep outreach consistent with whatever instructions the live page gives.

General tactics for public reader votes, from reminder cadence to social sharing, are covered in this site's guide to earning more votes; apply them to the nomination stretch as well as the voting stretch, since a nominee who is never nominated has nothing to campaign for.