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

Best of the Bighorns: three straight editions, one closed 2026 window

Three years running, 2024, 2025, and 2026, is the confirmed history behind Best of the Bighorns. Sheridan Press runs the ballot directly, without a national network's branding attached, on its own Second Street subdomain at thesheridanpress.secondstreetapp.com. Nominating and voting sat on one combined page for the 2026 round, open July 15 through August 15, 2026, a window that has already closed for the year.

Those two blank rows deserve an honest look rather than a guess filled in. Confirm on the live ballot each cycle, since three editions all closing by mid-August is a pattern worth noticing, not a promise the fourth round keeps it.

A newspaper's own ballot, not a branded statewide network

Sheridan Press runs Best of the Bighorns itself, the same way several other Wyoming newspapers run their own readers'-choice ballots rather than routing through a shared brand. That distinction matters for a Sheridan business trying to find the right page.

Judging panels, prize pools and winner announcements all stay separate across these seven programs; a strong showing in one does nothing for standing in another. A Sheridan business entering several of them at once is effectively running parallel, unrelated campaigns, each with its own deadline and its own unwritten rulebook.

Why that matters heading into the next round

A generic search for Wyoming business-awards voting can just as easily surface Cheyenne's or Casper's ballot as Sheridan Press's own listing. Three closed rounds by mid-August form the settled part of this story; the fourth round's opening date, and whether a standalone voting stage ever gets added, has not been printed anywhere else, so thesheridanpress.secondstreetapp.com stays the first and only place to check.

Sheridan is the only market this ballot names

Sheridan is the market Sheridan Press names for Best of the Bighorns, and the confirmed page draws no line beyond that. Neither a list of neighboring towns nor a rule spelling out whose vote actually counts shows up anywhere on thesheridanpress.secondstreetapp.com.

The same Sheridan Press Second Street account also hosts seasonal sweepstakes and a separate athlete-of-the-week ballot, kept apart from Best of the Bighorns and its own tally.

Sheridan Press itself uses one word for the market: Sheridan. Stretching that further is a call left entirely to the business making it, not something the platform has spelled out either way.

Building a push around three confirmed rounds, not a guessed-at fourth

Three straight editions hand a Sheridan business a longer runway to plan against than a brand-new ballot would offer, even with neither a category sheet nor a stated vote ceiling to work from. Building a short list of loyal customers willing to open thesheridanpress.secondstreetapp.com the moment the fourth round starts beats waiting on rules Sheridan Press has not yet printed.

A personal ask, repeated to the same supporters more than once, tends to outperform one mass message sent a single time, no matter how the next round ends up structured. Padding a total with anything other than genuine votes puts the whole entry at risk, and three prior editions give Sheridan Press more history to notice an odd spike against than a first-year program would have. is buying votes legal separates a defensible campaign from one that crosses a line, worth reading before committing real budget to a fourth Best of the Bighorns round. Buying votes online covers what paid support commonly involves for a ballot that combines nominating and voting into one stage, and award-vote campaign planning is built around exactly the readers'-choice format Sheridan Press uses.