Best of the Best - Janesville: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Best of the Best - Janesville is and who runs it

Best of the Best - Janesville is a readers' choice awards program that celebrates the top businesses and organizations across the Janesville, Wisconsin area. The organizer is the local Gannett / USA TODAY Network newspaper, and the ballot is hosted on Your Choice Awards, the publisher's own platform, at yourchoiceawards.com/janesville/. It is a business-vertical best-of program: the nominees are local companies and organizations, and the people deciding the winners are the readers and customers who use them.

The scale is substantial for a market of this size. The program states that each year it recognizes over 540 businesses and organizations across its category list. That makes it one of the broadest single-market ballots in the publisher's Wisconsin portfolio, covering everything a local customer might regularly spend money on.

The program is structured around three public phases. It begins with nominations, continues with a public voting round after the leading nominees in every category advance, and closes with a winners announcement tied to an Awards Gala. The page also carries a Business Resources section and an FAQ, which fits the publisher's pattern of running these ballots as full seasonal programs rather than simple polls.

Key facts

The dated facts: editions, rounds and gaps

Two editions of Best of the Best - Janesville are confirmed: 2024 and 2025. The program is annual, so the cycle continues beyond those two years. The organizer has not posted the nomination and voting window dates for the coming cycle; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The 2025 cycle is the one with a fully published schedule. The nomination round ran April 4-25, 2025, under the banner that it all begins with nominations. After nominations closed, the leading nominees in every category advanced to the voting round, which ran June 9-23, 2025. Once voting ended, winners were announced on August 28, 2025, with the page noting that excitement builds as the organizers prepare to reveal the winners.

That gives the annual shape a clear rhythm: nominations in spring, public voting in early summer, winners in late August. The 2024 edition is confirmed as a year the program ran, but the round-by-round dates for that cycle are not part of the published text.

On the rules side, the published text is more complete than most local ballots. It states the per-voter pattern, the sweepstakes threshold and the scale of recognition. What the overview text leaves out is the full category-by-category roster, nor any eligibility fine print beyond the sweepstakes condition, so a business planning its campaign should read the live ballot's own rules section before the nomination round opens.

How a supporter votes in the Janesville ballot today

The mechanic on the Your Choice Awards ballot is a straightforward public vote with a daily return built in. The organizer's published rule is explicit: one vote in each category on each day the round runs. A supporter who wants a particular Janesville business to win therefore does not vote once and leave; they come back every day of the voting round and log one vote in that category, day after day.

The ballot is wide. With over 540 businesses and organizations recognized each year, a supporter almost always has several categories where they have a genuine favorite. The organizer leans into this with a sweepstakes: if you vote in 25 or more categories, you will be eligible to win a $250 prize. That incentive pushes supporters to fill out large portions of the ballot in one sitting, which is good news for any business whose customers arrive through that sweepstakes prompt.

The sequence for the 2025 cycle looked like this. Nominations opened April 4 and closed April 25. The leading nominees in every category then advanced to the voting round, which ran June 9 through June 23. Winners were announced August 28, and the program ties the reveal to an Awards Gala. A supporter joining the next cycle should expect the same three-phase shape, with the current dates posted on the ballot page itself.

There is no login requirement stated in the published text and no fee to vote. The contribution a supporter makes is free, repeatable daily, and broad across categories if they chase the sweepstakes entry.

How the Janesville ballot sits beside its Wisconsin neighbours

Best of the Best - Janesville is one of several readers' choice ballots the USA TODAY Network and other publishers run across Wisconsin, and each answers to its own organizer with its own rules. Within the same publisher's portfolio, the closest siblings are Best of the Valley - Appleton, WI and Best of the Bay - Green Bay, both Your Choice Awards ballots in other Wisconsin markets. Eau Claire Reader's Choice Awards sits in the same family of publisher-run best-of programs.

Two siblings come from different publishers entirely. Best of Madison and Best of Milwaukee - Readers' Choice serve the state's two largest markets under their own editorial brands, with their own category lists and their own rules. Support earned on any of these ballots counts only toward that program.

The most interesting neighbour for a Janesville business is Janesville CommunityVotes, because it serves the same city under a different organizer. A local company can legitimately appear on both ballots, and its customers may be asked to vote in both. The rules, windows and platforms differ, so the campaign plan for one does not transfer automatically to the other.

What distinguishes the Janesville USA TODAY ballot within this set is its published depth: recognition of over 540 businesses and organizations each year, a dated three-phase schedule and a $250 sweepstakes prize tied to voting in 25 or more categories. Few local ballots of this size print that much of their own structure.

Building support in the Best of the Best - Janesville round

A campaign for this ballot should be built around the daily-return rule, because that is where the organizer built the advantage. Since the limit is one vote in each category on each day the round runs, a business that reminds its customers every morning of the voting round multiplies its support without anyone breaking the stated limit. The 2025 voting round ran June 9-23, a window long enough that a daily reminder habit matters far more than a single push near the deadline.

The sweepstakes is the second lever for a Janesville campaign. Because voting in 25 or more categories makes a supporter eligible for the $250 prize, a business can ask its customers to fill out the whole ballot with the business's name in its own category. That request is easy to make and gives the customer something in return, which makes the ask repeatable across the whole voting window.

The organizer's published text sets the per-voter pattern but says nothing about outside vote services, and the ballot is built around organic daily participation as the norm. A business that wants to understand what purchased support involves can read the general service overview or the award-vote page, and should weigh any outside help against the organizer's rules before spending on it. No vote service can promise a first-place result in a public ballot like this one.