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

Five editions, one host, and a February close already behind this cycle

Carroll News Gemini Awards is a readers-choice ballot run by the newspaper Carroll News, hosted on the Second Street platform at carrollnews.secondstreetapp.com. The 2026 ballot opened January 21 and closed February 19, a window already finished by the time this cycle's results would matter to a reader searching for it now.

Carroll News itself runs other promotions on the same Second Street host outside the Gemini Awards. A "$5,000 Groceries Sweepstakes," an "America's 250th Anniversary Quiz," a "Best Christmas Lights Display" photo vote, and several other sweepstakes all sit on the same carrollnews.secondstreetapp.com address, closed at different points across 2025 and 2026. The Gemini Awards is the readers-choice entry among that mix, and the only one confirmed across multiple editions.

Carroll News's own site sits at thecarrollnews.com; the ballot itself lives on the separate Second Street address above. Whatever the Gemini Awards' next cycle looks like, category list included, confirm on the live ballot each cycle rather than assuming this year's structure repeats exactly.

Five confirmed years, one gap, and what that pattern actually says

2021, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026: that's the full confirmed run of the Gemini Awards. 2022 is the single year missing from that span, sitting between two editions that did run. Nothing published explains why, whether the ballot simply paused that year or a page from that cycle didn't survive wherever this guide's sources were checked.

What the pattern does say is that the program has run in four of the last five years, including back-to-back cycles in 2023 through 2026. A nominee weighing whether Carroll News plans to keep running the Gemini Awards has a reasonably steady four-year run to point to, even with the one missing year factored in.

Why the missing year matters for anyone planning around this ballot

A four-week window, January 21 to February 19, is short. Someone assuming the Gemini Awards runs on a fixed annual calendar, the same month every year, has no confirmed basis for that assumption beyond 2026 itself; the four other confirmed editions don't come with their own published open and close dates in what's held here. The safer approach is checking carrollnews.secondstreetapp.com directly once the next cycle looks likely, rather than marking a calendar date a year in advance.

A single-newspaper ballot, not a statewide or multi-market network

Unlike BroadwayWorld's Virginia awards, which run an identical theater-ballot format across multiple named regions under one shared organizer, the Gemini Awards belongs to one newspaper alone. Carroll News runs it on its own Second Street address, separate from the multi-market business ballots elsewhere in the state.

Each of those six keeps its own separate winner announcement, its own timeline, and its own rulebook, entirely apart from Carroll News. Even the quiz and sweepstakes titles sitting on the same carrollnews.secondstreetapp.com host settle their own outcomes without touching the Gemini Awards in any way. A business moving from one of these six over to the Gemini Awards, or the reverse, starts fresh every time: new organizer, new terms, new ballot page to learn.

Planning around a four-week window that has already closed once

With the 2026 window shut as of February 19, the immediate planning question is when the next cycle opens rather than how this one played out. Four editions in a row, 2023 through 2026, is a reasonable basis for expecting the Gemini Awards back again, even with 2022 unaccounted for in that run.

Whenever the next window lands, planning around it doesn't have to wait on a published category list or vote-cap number. Line up readers who will actually click through to carrollnews.secondstreetapp.com themselves, and spread those visits across the full stretch rather than crowding them into the final days before close. A ballot that already sat out one full year, 2022, is one where a visibly genuine, spread-out push counts for more than a late, concentrated one, precisely because the unexplained gap already stands out on its own.

Getting nominated and actually winning stay two separate outcomes, and only Carroll News settles the second one once its own process finishes. Is buying votes legal draws that line clearly, worth a look before spending real money chasing a sixth Gemini Awards edition. Buying votes online lays out what a paid push generally involves for a readers-choice ballot, and award-vote campaign planning is shaped specifically around the newspaper-award format the Gemini Awards fits.