Bennington County Readers' Choice: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Bennington County Readers' Choice is and who runs it

Bennington County Readers' Choice is a best-of readers' ballot covering the business and community life of Bennington County in southwestern Vermont. The organizer is the Bennington Banner, a daily newspaper headquartered at 423 Main Street in Bennington, and the program's own published description reads, "The best of the best of Bennington County, as chosen by Bennington Banner and Manchester Journal readers." That sentence places two publications behind the ballot: the Banner itself and the Manchester Journal, its sister paper covering the county's northern towns.

The program is a special section rather than a standalone event. On the Banner's website it appears under the Special Sections area, alongside the publisher's other seasonal supplements, and the Banner's own domain hosts the ballot instead of an outside voting platform. The voting URL is https://www.benningtonbanner.com/bannerss/, which is the special sections landing page where the current Readers' Choice edition lives.

The vertical is best-of: the publisher invites readers to name their favorites across local businesses, services and organizations, then tallies the responses into a published supplement. Past results have been issued as a printed Readers' Choice edition carrying the year in the title, such as "Bennington County Readers Choice 2025." The 2026 promotion carried the tagline "The best of the best in Bennington County, chosen by you!"

Facts at a glance

Editions, years and the 2026 window

The confirmed edition history for this program runs from 2021 through 2026, one edition per year, with every one of those six years evidenced on the publisher's own pages. That span places Bennington County Readers' Choice among the longer-running readers' ballots in southern Vermont, and it distinguishes the program from newer county polls that have held only a single edition. Because the series has repeated in consecutive summers, treating it as an annual fixture in the Banner's special sections calendar is consistent with the published history.

The live cycle for 2026 falls in July. The publisher's July 2026 material shows the Readers' Choice special section running during that month, under the headline "Bennington County Readers Choice 2026" with the tagline "The best of the best in Bennington County, chosen by you!" The month is what the published material establishes; the exact opening and closing days shift with each summer's scheduling, and readers planning a push should confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Three further gaps sit beside the dated facts. The publisher has not printed a standing category roster away from the ballot itself. No published text sets a cap on how often one person may return to the form, nor an eligibility rule for participants. And no schedule of platform rounds exists outside the special sections page, since the Banner hosts the vote on its own site instead of a third-party contest platform with published phase dates.

How a supporter votes today

The mechanic is direct. A supporter opens the Bennington Banner's special sections page at benningtonbanner.com/bannerss/ during the July window, finds the Readers' Choice edition on that page, and marks selections on the ballot form the publisher serves from its own domain. No outside account or third-party contest platform stands between the reader and the form, which keeps the path short compared with ballots that require a platform login.

What the form asks is stated in the program's own tagline, "The best of the best in Bennington County, chosen by you!" Readers choose favorites across the county's business and community categories, and the publisher describes the choosing audience as Bennington Banner and Manchester Journal readers together. In practical terms that means the reachable audience is the two papers' readership across Bennington, Manchester, Arlington and the rest of the county.

Because the publisher serves the ballot from its own site, its instructions are the final word on conduct. Any limit on repeat voting, any requirement to supply contact information, and any statement about how selections are counted appear on the form itself during the window. A supporter who wants to return on more than one day should read what the 2026 ballot prints before doing so, since the organizer owns the rule and can set it differently each summer. The same applies to businesses campaigning for votes: the printed terms on the live ballot are the boundary every promotion has to respect.

How this ballot sits beside its Vermont neighbours

Bennington County Readers' Choice is one of several best-of ballots published by Vermont newspapers, and its market is the state's southwestern corner. Readers comparing options in the state will find a distinct publication behind each program. The Brattleboro Reformer Readers' Choice serves the state's southeast from a different newsroom, and its page at /usa/vermont/brattleboro-reformer-readers-choice/ describes that market's own ballot. The Rutland Herald Best of the Best covers Rutland County to the north at /usa/vermont/rutland-herald-best-of-the-best/, and the Times Argus Best of the Best serves the Washington County area at /usa/vermont/times-argus-best-of-the-best/.

Statewide programs sit alongside these as well. The Seven Daysies, run by the Burlington weekly Seven Days, draw participation from across Vermont, and their page at /usa/vermont/seven-daysies/ explains that larger ballot. The Stowe Reporter Readers' Choice covers the resort town's market at /usa/vermont/stowe-reporter-readers-choice/, and the Best of Business Awards from Vermont Business Magazine take a statewide business angle at /usa/vermont/best-of-business-awards-vermont-business-magazine/.

What separates the Bennington County program from every one of those neighbours is its joint publisher base and its county scope. No other Vermont ballot on this site is described as chosen by two papers' readers together, and none is scoped exactly to Bennington County. For a business in Bennington, Manchester or Arlington, that means the local readers' choice title is won or lost on this ballot alone, and a statewide program's result cannot substitute for it.