Best of the Bighorns 2026: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Best of the Bighorns is and who runs it

Best of the Bighorns 2026 is a readers' choice ballot for Sheridan County, Wyoming, run by The Sheridan Press, the newspaper based in Sheridan. The ballot belongs to the readers' choice family: its stated purpose, in the ballot's own description, is to "Recognize the best of Sheridan County 2026 by voting for your favorite entities in our community!" That places it among the newspaper-run recognition contests common across Wyoming, but scoped to the paper's home county rather than to a city limit or to the whole state.

Second Street carries the ballot; it is the platform The Sheridan Press uses for its interactive promotions generally. The 2026 edition sits at thesheridanpress.secondstreetapp.com/Best-of-the-Bighorns-2026, and the platform registers it in the nomination and voting format, so the ballot combines a nomination stage with a voting stage rather than being a straight pick-only form. The same publisher account also carries other promotions, including a sweepstakes series and a weekly athlete ballot, so a supporter arriving through the paper's Second Street pages should check the address to be sure they are on the Best of the Bighorns ballot itself.

Facts at a glance

The dated timeline: editions, windows and what is not published

The years 2024, 2025 and 2026 each have a confirmed edition. Every edition sits at its own Second Street address under The Sheridan Press account: the 2025 ballot at Best-of-the-Bighorns-2025 and the 2024 ballot at Best-of-the-Bighorns-2024-2, alongside the 2026 page. That gives the program a yearly pattern across those years, with 2026 the most recent confirmed run.

The 2026 window is the dated anchor of this page. It opened on July 15, 2026 and closed on August 15, 2026, a span of a month, and the ballot is now closed. The platform registered the 2026 promotion in the nomination and voting format for that whole window, so nomination and voting ran together rather than in separate phases with different dates.

Alongside those facts stand the gaps. No category roster is printed in advance, and neither a per-supporter limit nor eligibility terms appear anywhere published, so confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The Sheridan Press has also not dated a 2027 edition. The yearly pattern across 2024, 2025 and 2026 makes a further edition plausible, but plausible is not confirmed, and nothing on the published pages states an opening month for the next round.

For a supporter or business planning around this ballot, the practical reading is straightforward: what stands confirmed is the organizer, the platform, the three edition years and the 2026 window, and everything else waits on the paper's own announcements.

How a supporter votes on this ballot

The Second Street page is where the vote takes place. A supporter opens thesheridanpress.secondstreetapp.com/Best-of-the-Bighorns-2026 and works through the form as printed. Because the 2026 promotion ran in the nomination and voting format, the ballot asks for nominations where a category needs them and straight selections where it does not; the on-page instructions at each step are the authority, since the organizer publishes no advance rule sheet.

The category list is printed on the live ballot once the window opens rather than being announced beforehand. A supporter responding during the 2026 window saw the roster as presented on screen and answered the categories they chose to answer. After August 15, 2026, the ballot shows as closed, and there is no route to respond to a closed edition.

The format raises two practical points. First, the address matters: every edition sits at its own page, so a supporter following an old link could land on the 2025 or 2024 ballot instead of the current one. Checking the year in the address before responding avoids that. Second, the nomination stage means a business that wants to appear may need its supporters to nominate it before a straight vote is possible, which makes early participation during the window more useful than a late push. The exact behavior of each stage, including whether a supporter can return to the ballot, is governed by the instructions printed on the live page for the edition in question.

How this ballot sits beside its Wyoming neighbours

Wyoming's readers' choice ballots split by geography and publisher, and Best of the Bighorns occupies the Sheridan County slot. Statewide in scope are Best of Wyoming and the Casper Star-Tribune Best of Wyoming, either of which covers communities this county ballot treats locally. City-scoped siblings include Cap City's Best and CommunityVotes Cheyenne in Cheyenne, County 17's Best in Gillette, and Best of Jackson Hole in the state's northwest.

The difference that matters to a Sheridan County business is scope and audience. A statewide ballot spreads attention across the whole state, while this one concentrates it on the paper's home county, so a win here reads as a verdict from the community a business actually serves. It also answers to its own publisher: The Sheridan Press sets this ballot's window and rules, and none of the sibling programs' dates or rules carry over to it.

Within the paper's own lineup, Best of the Bighorns is distinct from the paper's Athlete of the Week ballot, a weekly sports program with short windows during a season. The best-of program runs as a month-long summer ballot, as the 2026 window from July 15 to August 15 shows, and it addresses the whole county's businesses and organizations rather than school sports. A supporter interested in the wider Wyoming field can compare this page with the siblings above, but each program's dates and rules belong to its own publisher.

Strengthening support during the window

This ballot rewards early, organized support. Because it runs in a nomination and voting format, a nominee's supporters may need to act at the nomination stage before straight voting helps, which makes the opening days of the window more valuable than the closing ones. The 2026 window ran a full month, from July 15 to August 15, giving a business time to ask customers in person, put the ballot address on receipts and signage, and remind people who had not yet responded.

The Sheridan Press publishes no statement on this ballot about outside assistance or purchased support, so its printed rules on the live page are the only authority on what counts. Any promotional effort should be measured against those terms, since the organizer decides which votes stand. General tactics that fit a newspaper-run public vote, from email lists to in-store prompts, are gathered in our votes guide, and the policy questions around paid support are addressed at is buying votes legal. What no outside help changes is the ballot's scope: support here means Sheridan County recognition, and the strongest campaigns are the ones that reach the people who actually live and shop there.