Edmonds Scarecrow Festival: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Edmonds Scarecrow Festival is and who presents it

The Edmonds Historical Museum presents the Edmonds Scarecrow Festival, an October event in Edmonds, in Washington State. The page for 2026 is titled "14th Annual Scarecrow Festival 2026," and its introduction says the museum invites people to join "the family-friendly" festival. The page menu lists Scarecrow Tips, Enter the Contest and Scarecrow Entries, so the same page serves builders, entrants and voters.

It is a museum event first and a contest second. The festival's identity comes from a local historical museum rather than from a newspaper or a business directory, and the ballot sits on the museum's site, historicedmonds.org. Visitors vote for a favorite entry, which turns a stroll through town into a small public election with scarecrows as candidates.

For a family weighing whether to take part, the museum setting is the main selling point. A scarecrow built at a kitchen table can sit beside entries from larger groups, because the festival is framed around community fun rather than professional design. The museum's own wording invites people to join the festival, which treats a voter and an entrant as members of the same neighborhood event.

The festival is also linked to trick-or-treating in the page text, which tells a reader that the event is meant for families and for the Halloween season in Edmonds. The table sets out the facts that the page states.

The 14th edition and the entry window

The museum numbers its festivals, which gives this ballot an unusually clear history. The 2026 round is the 14th. The contest is confirmed for 2025 and 2026 on the pages on file, and the numbering shows an event that began well before either of those years.

A numbered festival is also a useful signal for readers who wonder whether the contest is real. A 14th annual event has a long run behind it, and the museum's page, not a third-party platform, carries the numbering. That is why the ordinal is worth quoting exactly as the page prints it, without turning it into a start year that the text does not give.

The entry window is the date range a builder needs. Scarecrows may be submitted from September 24th through October 24th, so entries can arrive over a month. The museum has not printed a day-level voting start or end in the text on file, and it gives no category list or per-voter limit; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Since entries keep arriving until late October, a supporter who votes early may see fewer scarecrows than one who waits.

How a visitor votes for a favorite scarecrow

The mechanic is the one the page states: vote for your favorite entry. A visitor opens the museum's festival page, looks through Scarecrow Entries and picks the scarecrow that deserves the win. There is no business to rate and no category to navigate, only a gallery of handmade figures from Edmonds neighbors, families and groups.

Compared with a business poll, a scarecrow ballot is easy to judge. Nobody needs to remember a restaurant they visited in the summer; a figure standing in a yard or a window either makes a viewer smile or does not. That immediacy shapes how support spreads, since a good photograph of a scarecrow does much of the persuading before a single message is written.

The Scarecrow Tips link on the page is aimed at builders, not voters, but it hints at what voters see: figures made to be noticed from the sidewalk. A voter who has walked the route can judge from experience. A voter who has not can judge from the photographs on the entries page.

What the page does not say is how many votes one person may cast, whether voting requires a login, or when the last vote counts. Those details belong to the live page. Because the museum is a community organization, a supporter should read the contest rules or ask staff if a rule is unclear. Entrants should also keep in mind that new scarecrows may continue to appear until October 24th, so a favorite today may face a late challenger. The museum frames the event as one for families, which sets a friendly tone for the vote.

How the Edmonds festival differs from other Washington State ballots

Washington State's other ballots on this site are mostly newspaper and magazine readers' polls. The Edmonds festival is a museum event with handmade entries and a single question, favorite scarecrow. Its siblings are Best of 425, Cascade's Best, Best of Clark County, Best of Snohomish County, Best of Western Washington and the Best of the Best Northwest Readers' Choice.

The contrast shows up in the calendar as well. A readers' poll for businesses tends to run as a long public campaign, while a festival with an entry window of September 24th to October 24th is built around the season. Edmonds residents who know the museum's other work will recognize the same organizer behind the fall event, and a supporter who wants rules should look to the museum, not to a sibling ballot.

Best of Snohomish County is the nearest by region, but it ranks businesses. The scarecrow vote ranks handmade figures, which makes it a different kind of ballot for a different audience.

Building support for a scarecrow entry

The most useful habit is to start early. Because entries are accepted for a month, a scarecrow that goes up on September 24th has more days in front of the public than one that appears at the end of the window. A builder can use those days to photograph the figure from a few angles and share the entries page with family, classmates, clubs and coworkers in Edmonds.

A scarecrow earns votes by being seen. Builders can post photographs, invite friends to the museum's entries page and remind neighbors that entries are open from September 24th to October 24th. The museum is the authority on any rule about voting more than once.

Our guide to getting more votes online covers outreach for public ballots, and buy votes online describes the paid service. The museum has published nothing about outside help in the text on file, and no result can be promised.