Best of Jefferson County: How Voting Works & How to Win

Best of Jefferson County: three Peninsula newsrooms, one Second Street ballot

Best of Jefferson County is not printed under a single paper's own name. The Peninsula Daily News, the Sequim Gazette, and Forks Forum jointly invite nominations for "the incredible people, places, and organizations" of Jefferson County, then run the ballot on Second Street's shared platform rather than any one paper's own website. Forks Forum is the organizer tied to this specific listing, at forksforum.secondstreetapp.com.

The vertical is a readers'-choice business award, the nominate-then-vote shape Second Street hosts for newspaper markets across the country. Jefferson County is the coverage area printed on the ballot's own name, distinct from the West End ballot Forks Forum runs separately on the same Second Street account for the far side of the peninsula.

Jefferson County is the name the three newsrooms themselves chose for this ballot, not a boundary this guide is drawing from outside it.

Two editions on file, and what Second Street still leaves unpublished

2025 and 2026 are the two editions Best of Jefferson County has on file. The 2025 cycle carries fuller published detail than the 2026 edition that followed it: Forks Forum's own coverage opened nominations June 9, and the ballot then moved into a voting round that ran through July 13, with Second Street's system marking the full window through July 14. A 2026 edition followed, confirmed through the paper's own reporting the following July, though a window as detailed as 2025's has not surfaced for it yet.

The three newsrooms call the wider program an annual return rather than a single appearance, consistent with a ballot now on its second confirmed year. What that annual framing does not extend to is the ballot's own rules: Second Street's Jefferson County listing prints no category roster and no per-voter limit; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

That gap sits differently here than it might on a single paper's own ballot. A three-newsroom effort spanning this side of the peninsula has more moving parts, and a nomination that assumes a rule from a different listing is guessing rather than reading what Jefferson County's own page actually says.

Casting a vote for Best of Jefferson County today

A supporter opens forksforum.secondstreetapp.com and looks for the business by its public name directly on the Jefferson County ballot, since no category menu splits the page into smaller groups first. That is the entire mechanic Second Street's nomination-and-voting format publishes for this listing: find the name, select it, submit.

Nothing published for Jefferson County specifies how many times one supporter may return to vote, unlike a strict daily cap some other Second Street ballots state outright. Until that changes, a campaign built on the page's actual, published mechanic rather than an assumed limit is the version that holds up.

The nomination phase and the voting phase are not separate addresses on this listing. Second Street's own system treats the June 9 through July 14 stretch as one combined ballot window, shifting from gathering names to counting votes partway through without a break in the page a supporter needs to bookmark.

Where Best of Jefferson County sits beside Washington's other reader ballots

Washington runs a wide field of separate readers'-choice ballots, each answering to its own newsroom and drawing its own coverage boundary, and Best of Jefferson County is the entry specific to the Olympic Peninsula's Jefferson County side rather than to Puget Sound.

None of those six share a ballot or a result with the three-newsroom Jefferson County count. Forks Forum's own Second Street account carries further promotions beyond this one too, including a separate West End ballot and a rotating sweepstakes series, none of which feed into Jefferson County's own tally. A nomination pushed on one of those unrelated listings does nothing for a Jefferson County business.

Building support for a Jefferson County nomination

With no published ceiling on repeat visits to the Jefferson County ballot, the practical approach is reaching real customers more than once between June 9 and the July window's close rather than relying on a single push. The three newsrooms have not stated a position on outside campaign help specifically for this county's ballot, so Second Street's general platform terms are the only published word on the subject.

Spacing genuine requests across the nomination and voting stretch fits what is actually printed for Jefferson County. Business readers'-choice vote support covers how that kind of pacing is typically planned for a joint, multi-newsroom ballot shaped like this one.