Forks Forum Festival of Trees: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Forks Forum Festival of Trees and who runs it?

The Forks Forum Festival of Trees is a seasonal reader ballot run by the Forks Forum, a weekly newspaper published on Thursdays that serves the city of Forks in Clallam County, Washington State. The program sits inside the paper's promotion calendar beside its other reader features, and it is built as a Ballot/VotingBallot on Second Street, the platform that carries every Forks Forum promotion at the paper's own Second Street address.

Classified as a best-of style contest with a business leaning, the ballot invites the Forks community to weigh in on decorated tree entries during the holiday stretch. Voting is open to anyone holding the ballot link while the window runs, which places it in the public-vote family rather than a judged or ticketed format. Every entry draws on the same citywide readership, which gives campaigns here a strongly local flavor.

The essentials at a glance

Which editions of the Festival of Trees are confirmed, and when does the window fall?

Confirmed runs of the ballot cover 2024 and 2025, and two consecutive winters establish the recurring rhythm: the program came back for a second straight December instead of stopping after a lone experiment. The 2025 edition carries full platform dates, while the 2024 edition is witnessed by a live ballot posted at the same address during that year.

The newest window opened on December 4, 2025 and closed on January 4, 2026, and the ballot now stands closed. Both confirmed editions therefore bridge the turn of the calendar year, opening in early December and finishing in early January. No successor window has been announced yet; the ballot address is where a new date would land first.

The type labels the platform assigns help tell the programs on this account apart. The Festival of Trees is recorded as a Ballot/VotingBallot, whereas the paper's Best of West End contest runs under the NominationAndVotingBallot label, the format that bundles a nomination round together with the public vote.

Fine print is thin in places. Whether a nomination stage precedes voting is not addressed anywhere on the page. The ballot also leaves out the list of categories its entries compete in; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How does a supporter vote in the Forks Forum Festival of Trees?

Taking part starts with the ballot address, forksforum.secondstreetapp.com/Festival-Of-Trees, which lives under the paper's own Second Street account rather than a separate contest site. Once the window is open, the page presents the tree entries submitted for that cycle. A supporter scrolls the entries, chooses the one to back, and casts a vote on the spot.

The pacing rule shapes everything about the race: during the 2025 stage, each person could log a single daily vote. That turns support into a daily habit, since a lone visit moves an entry forward by one mark. Backers who want an entry to finish strong plan a return trip every day the ballot stays open, right through to the closing point in early January.

Nothing on the ballot points to a fee for participating, and the format asks nothing more elaborate than a selection and a submission. The page runs in an ordinary browser, phone or desktop alike. Because the paper stacks several promotions on the same Second Street address, arriving by the direct Festival Of Trees link saves hunting through the paper's other sweeps and ballots.

Where does this ballot sit among Washington State reader-choice contests?

The Forks Forum keeps a busy promotion calendar, and the Festival of Trees shares its Second Street address with several stablemates. The paper's Best of Clallam County readers' choice contest runs on the same account, as does Best of West End, a nomination-and-voting ballot that ran from June 15 through July 27, 2026.

Cash drawings fill the gaps between ballots. A $5,000 Sweepstakes ran July 28 through August 27 in 2025, and the 2026 calendar stacked three further drawings at that same prize level: January 26 through February 25, April 20 through May 20, and July 27 through August 26. The larger $15,000 Sweepstakes anchors the final quarter of each year, with the 2025 drawing running November 3 through December 10 and the 2026 follow-up scheduled for November 2 through December 9, still ahead on the calendar as an upcoming promotion.

Set against that rotation, the tree ballot is the seasonal outlier on the account. It is a one-paper, one-town holiday ballot rather than a citywide popularity survey, it runs in the December-to-January stretch when the quarterly drawings and the summer readers' choice rounds sit elsewhere on the calendar, and its entries center on trees and the businesses behind them instead of a broad category grid. Readers comparing options inside Clallam County can see the contrast directly in the paper's Best of Clallam County contest.

Beyond the paper's own lineup, the ballot belongs to a wider Washington State set of reader-choice programs. Best of 425 covers the Eastside, Cascade's Best takes another slice of the state, the Columbian runs Best of Clark County, the Everett Herald stages Best of Snohomish County, KING5 fronts Best of Western Washington, and the Seattle Medium stages Best of the Best Northwest, its own readers' choice production. Each of those chases a metro or regional audience.

How can a campaign build support in the Festival of Trees vote?

Support in this ballot compounds. Because the 2025 stage paced every person at one daily vote, the races reward campaigns that return day after day for the length of the window, so the first move for any backer is a calendar reminder tied to the ballot address. Sharing that link through Forks community channels, from workplace boards to family group chats, keeps those daily visits coming without any spend at all.

The calendar shape matters too. The window stretches across both halves of the holiday season, opening in early December and finishing after New Year's Day, so a campaign that peaks at Christmas and then falls quiet surrenders ground during the final stretch. Spacing reminders across the entire span, rather than front-loading them into the first fortnight, matches how the daily pacing rule actually accumulates marks.

Outside help is a separate question. The Forks Forum has not printed a policy on assisted or purchased voting for this ballot, so there is no stated rule to lean on either way. Services that sell votes for public contests do exist, and backers weighing that route can start with the guide to getting more votes online or the overview of buying votes online. Whichever route a campaign takes, the ballot's own terms, posted on the live page, are the final word on what counts.