Carroll News Gemini Awards 2026: How Voting Works & How to Win

A small-town newspaper ballot beside Virginia's big readers-choice contests

Most Virginia readers-choice ballots on this site answer to metro dailies or statewide magazines. The Carroll News Gemini Awards 2026 is the opposite kind of program: a readers-choice vote run by the Carroll News, a weekly newspaper based in Hillsville, Virginia, for the community that paper serves. It sits in the best-of vertical and is a public-vote contest, meaning anyone who reaches the ballot can cast choices rather than a jury or editorial board deciding.

The host is Second Street, the same contest platform used by a large share of American newspapers, and the ballot lives on the newspaper's own subdomain, carrollnews.secondstreetapp.com. The 2026 edition's address is https://carrollnews.secondstreetapp.com/Carroll-News-Gemini-Awards-2026. Compared with siblings like Best of Arlington or the Best of Coastal Virginia Magazine ballot, this program covers a far smaller circulation footprint, which changes how a nomination there behaves: a handful of engaged readers can move a category.

The newspaper also runs sweepstakes and quizzes on the same subdomain, so the Gemini Awards is part of a broader promotions calendar rather than a standalone project. That matters for a supporter, because the address you want is the Gemini ballot itself, not the host's front page.

The dated history of the Gemini Awards

Five editions of the Gemini Awards are confirmed: 2021, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. That makes the run close to annual, with 2022 the only missing year in the span from 2021 through 2026. Each edition has its own address on the newspaper's Second Street subdomain, so the 2021, 2023 and 2025 ballots can still be visited at their separate URLs even though every one of them is closed.

The 2026 cycle is the most precisely dated. The ballot ran as a Ballot/VotingBallot promotion opening January 21, 2026 and closing February 19, 2026, a window of roughly four weeks in late winter. The timing evidence for the program overall spans 2021-04-26 through 2026-02-19, which is why the season cadence reads as a winter ballot with the 2021 edition as a spring outlier.

What the published listings do not carry is the category detail. The newspaper has not printed a Gemini category roster or any voting rules text outside the live ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. A 2027 edition is the natural next step given the pattern, but no announcement for it exists yet, and its open and close dates will only be known when the newspaper posts the next ballot.

How a supporter votes on the Gemini ballot

The mechanic is the standard Second Street readers-choice flow. A supporter opens the ballot page, browses the categories, picks a nominee in each one, and submits through the platform's form. During an open window the page tallies choices as they arrive, and the platform may ask for an email sign-in before accepting a submission. Because every edition since 2021 has been hosted on the same subdomain, the habit worth building is going straight to carrollnews.secondstreetapp.com and selecting the current Gemini ballot rather than searching for it.

Right now that flow cannot be completed: the 2026 window closed on February 19, so the live address shows a finished ballot. The action a supporter can take today is to read the closed 2026 page to see how the ballot is structured, then return when the newspaper launches its next edition. Second Street ballots typically open the new promotion at a fresh address, and the newspaper promotes it alongside its other contests.

Two cautions follow from the platform's design. Choices are submitted per category, so confirm each selection before submitting rather than after. And the newspaper's own rules for the live ballot are the final word on anything unusual, since no rules text for this program is published anywhere else. If you are weighing outside support for a nominee, read our votes guide first and check what the current ballot's rules permit.

How the Gemini Awards differs from its Virginia siblings

Six sibling programs on this site cover Virginia, and each one highlights something the Gemini Awards does differently. Best of Arlington and the BroadwayWorld NOVA Awards answer to much larger, denser markets than a Hillsville weekly serves, while the BroadwayWorld Central Virginia Awards and Best of Charlottesville anchor college-town scenes. The Daily Progress Charlottesville Readers' Choice is the closest structural cousin, a newspaper-run ballot, but it answers to a metro daily rather than a weekly.

The Gemini Awards' differences are its publisher type and its calendar. It is the only sibling run by a weekly paper based in Hillsville, and its confirmed run stretches back furthest among these, to 2021, with the 2022 gap as a wrinkle none of the others share. Its winter window also sets it apart from ballots that cluster in spring or summer.

For a nominee, the contrast is practical. In a small-market readers-choice ballot, reaching the newspaper's actual readers matters more than raw reach, because the pool of voters is the paper's own community. Sweepstakes promotions on the same subdomain draw traffic that a Gemini nomination does not, so timing outreach to the ballot's open weeks matters here in a way it may not on a year-round program. Anyone comparing Virginia options can follow the related links below and weigh each market on its own terms.