Best of Auburn: How Voting Works & How to Win

Voting is open right now: what Best of Auburn 2026 actually confirms

There's no waiting period here. Best of Auburn 2026 has been open for votes since August 21, and stays open through October 3, which means anyone reading this today can act on it immediately rather than marking a future date on a calendar.

The Auburn Reporter organizes the ballot directly, hosting it on Second Street at auburnreporter2.secondstreetapp.com. This is the program's third confirmed edition, following rounds in 2024 and 2025. Past the open-and-close dates, the public listing does not spell out much else: no category roster is attached, and no per-voter limit is stated.

Three years running the same August-to-October shape is a real pattern for a South King County community paper. Even so, confirm on the live ballot each cycle for anything beyond those two rows, since an open ballot today says nothing about rules it has never printed.

A South King County community paper, not one of the region's bigger networks

Washington's readers'-choice landscape includes several large regional and county-wide programs, and Auburn's own ballot is a smaller, city-focused entry run independently of all of them.

None of those six programs share a ballot, a judging process, or a results page with the Auburn Reporter, and a strong Auburn finish carries no weight in any of them. A business chasing recognition across several of these at once is running separate campaigns on separate platforms, not a single effort.

Why the exact link matters while voting is live

A search for "Auburn best of" during an open voting window can just as easily surface a Bellevue or Everett program, a stale prior-year page, or a broadcaster's regional poll, none of which move Auburn's own count. Only August 21 through October 3 is locked in for 2026; a category roster and a per-voter cap stay unpublished, so the Auburn Reporter's own page is where that gap gets filled first.

Auburn's ballot, and the other schedule running on the same account

Best of Auburn runs for Auburn, Washington, and the Auburn Reporter has not published a second ballot for any other city under this same program. Auburn is the only place this particular listing actually names.

The same auburnreporter2.secondstreetapp.com account also carries a running schedule of cash sweepstakes alongside Best of Auburn: a Q1, a Q2, a Q3 and a Q4 sweepstakes rotate through the year on their own separate entry pages, distinct from the nominate-and-vote ballot. A business chasing recognition should keep the two apart, since entering a sweepstakes does nothing for a Best of Auburn result, and the reverse holds too.

Confirm on the live ballot each cycle whether the organizer ever extends the program beyond Auburn itself; nothing published today draws that map.

Turning an open window into real support before October 3

With voting already underway, the practical move for an Auburn business is immediate: identify which real customers will actually click through to auburnreporter2.secondstreetapp.com, and ask them more than once across the remaining weeks rather than making a single request near the close.

That holds regardless of how the results eventually get announced. Genuine supporters, reached directly and repeatedly, are what moves a ballot like this one; steady real engagement spread across the remaining weeks carries far more weight than one burst of activity near the deadline. is buying votes legal lays out where a safe push ends and a risky one starts, worth a read before spending real budget on this open window. Buying votes online breaks down the outside support options a Second Street ballot like this one can actually accommodate, and award-vote campaign planning is built around exactly this readers'-choice format.