Seattle Medium Best of the Best Open: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Seattle Medium's 'Best of the Best Northwest' programme?

The Seattle Medium is a Seattle newspaper publishing from the seattlemedium.com domain, and its site footer carries the copyright of Tiloben Publishing Co for 2026. In the launch announcement the paper calls itself the Pacific Northwest's largest minority-owned and operated newspaper, and it uses that reach to invite readers into its inaugural Reader's Choice honours. The stated purpose is to recognize businesses, nonprofits, and leaders, with the programme highlighting community impact around the Pacific Northwest. The home market is Seattle, Washington, and the format belongs to the best-of tradition: a publication asking its region to name the organisations and people it considers outstanding. Nominations and voting both run through the newspaper's own site, and the working address for the programme is the nominations page printed in the table below. The launch headline, Seattle Medium Launches Inaugural Reader's Choice Awards, frames the whole exercise as a community invitation rather than a panel decision.

Item	Detail
Organizer	The Seattle Medium (Tiloben Publishing Co)
Programme	"Best of the Best Northwest" Readers' Choice Awards
Ballot address	https://seattlemedium.com/best-of-the-best-nominations-open/
Home market	Seattle, Washington
Vertical	best-of community awards
Mechanic	public vote on nominated names
Status	a single confirmed running, 2026

Which dates governed the 2026 cycle?

The newspaper printed its nomination window plainly: "The nominations period begins Wednesday, May 6, and runs until Friday, May 22nd." A later notice carried the story forward, announcing the nominated slate and setting the public-vote stretch at June 1 to June 19, 2026. Taken together, the notices give the cycle its shape, a nominating month followed by a voting month.

Reading the notices in order

Stage	Window	Notes
Nomination period	Wednesday, May 6 to Friday, May 22, 2026	readers submit names
Nominee announcement	between the windows	the paper announced its slate before voting opened
Community voting	June 1 to June 19, 2026	public vote on the announced nominees

No earlier running appears in the programme's published materials, and the launch headline itself used the word inaugural. This is the first confirmed edition; whether it returns next year is not yet published; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

What does a supporter actually do on the Seattle Medium ballot?

Taking part means acting during each stage the newspaper has defined. While the May window runs, a supporter submits a nomination online, naming a business, nonprofit or leader worthy of recognition. Once the paper announces its nominee slate, the same supporter comes back during the June voting stretch and registers a public vote for a favourite. No software step, login walkthrough or payment stage appears in the announcements; the exercise reads as an ordinary web form followed by an ordinary web vote. The two-stage rhythm is worth internalising, because it splits a supporter's effort into two separate pushes. Work done in May decides whose names appear on the June form, and work done in June decides which of those names finish strongest. A campaign that treats the whole spring as one undivided sprint tends to spend its energy before the stage that actually settles the outcome. The finer print is thinner than on most ballots. The Seattle Medium has not printed a per-person voting frequency or an eligibility standard for nominees. The paper has likewise stayed quiet on how the final tally is calculated, so supporters know the vote is public without knowing the arithmetic behind the result. That silence matters most to anyone mounting a serious push for a favoured nominee, because a rule left unwritten today can still shape how the paper treats tomorrow's totals.

How does this ballot sit beside other Washington best-of contests?

Washington already hosts a crowded field of reader-driven honours, and this site carries pages for several of them: Best of Western Washington from the KING5 station, Best of 425 serving Bellevue and the Eastside, Cascade's Best, Best of Clark County, the Everett Herald's Best of Snohomish County, and the Seattle Medium's own companion page, the paper's companion Readers' Choice ballot.

What separates this entry

Ballot	Market
Best of Western Washington	western Washington, statewide reach
Best of 425	Bellevue and the Eastside
Cascade's Best	Cascade foothill communities
Best of Clark County	Clark County in the southwest
Best of Snohomish County	Snohomish County north of Seattle
"Best of the Best Northwest"	Seattle and the wider Pacific Northwest

Several traits distinguish the Medium's ballot from those neighbours. Its publisher is a minority-owned newspaper rather than a broadcaster or a lifestyle title. Its structure asks for nominations before any vote is cast. Its scope stretches across the Pacific Northwest instead of a single county or a single television market. And its cycle is freshly launched, with 2026 as the only year on file, where the longer-running neighbours have seasons behind them. For a supporter choosing where to invest attention, that mix matters: a younger ballot offers less historical pattern to study, but also a fresher field in which early, organised backing stands out more sharply than it might on a veteran contest with an established annual following.

How can a nominee's backers strengthen their support?

Backers work with the calendar the paper has set. A nomination lodged early in the May window gives a favourite the longest possible runway, and steady attention across the June voting days is what turns goodwill into standing. Reminders to past customers, shareable messages and a clear ask all travel further when the voting days are known in advance, so build the push around the two windows rather than around guesswork. Because this is the programme's first running, there is no precedent showing how the paper handled heavy turnout or sudden surges in past cycles; whatever tolerance exists will show itself for the first time in 2026. Plan accordingly, spread outreach across the whole stretch instead of concentrating it, and keep every message truthful about who is being honoured and why. The Seattle Medium publishes no written stance on outside voting assistance, so anyone weighing paid help should judge it against that silence. Start with where bought votes stand legally, then read general tactics for widening a support base; award-style ballots are covered separately at the award votes page. Whatever route a campaign takes, the newspaper's own instructions remain the final word on how its totals are treated.