Best of the Best (Russellville Courier): How Voting Works & How to Win

Four editions, one open question: what a fifth round looks like

Best of the Best has now run four confirmed years in a row under the Russellville Courier: 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Each edition lives on its own Second Street page, with the 2026 round having opened July 1 and closed August 26. That is a longer run than many local ballots of this kind can show, though it still says nothing about exactly when a fifth round would open.

Second Street hosts the ballot for the Courier at russellvillecourier.secondstreetapp.com, a platform dozens of other newspapers use for similar polls. Four confirmed years sit on one side of that page; on the other side sits a gap the Courier has left unfilled: no printed list of categories, nothing telling a supporter whether repeat votes are even allowed.

Those blank rows are not an oversight; they are simply what the Courier has chosen not to publish yet. Confirm on the live ballot each cycle, because four straight years of editions still leaves that particular rulebook unwritten.

One newspaper's ballot among several Arkansas "best of" polls

The Russellville Courier's own account holds more than this single ballot. Its Second Street tenant lists forty-one promotions in total, including quarterly cash sweepstakes and separate photo contests such as a youth hunt gallery and a Halloween costume vote, none of which share results or judging with Best of the Best.

None of those five statewide polls fold a single Russellville vote into their own tallies, and a strong Best of the Best finish buys nothing on any of them either. Five different publishers, five different ballots, five separate sets of judges.

Four straight years, still an open question about round five

2023, 2024, 2025, 2026: the pattern is real, and it beats trusting a brand-new ballot with no history at all. What that pattern skips over is round five itself, its opening date, its categories, its vote limit. None of that is fixed until russellvillecourier.secondstreetapp.com actually says so, and guessing based on prior Julys is exactly the shortcut worth skipping.

Russellville named, nothing wider assumed

Russellville is the city the Russellville Courier names on its own platform, and its Second Street page does not draw any boundary past that. No neighborhood list, no county note, and no statement about which nearby towns count toward a nomination appear on russellvillecourier.secondstreetapp.com.

The Courier's Second Street account carries other active promotions tied to the same market, including quarterly sweepstakes and seasonal photo galleries, but none of those are part of Best of the Best itself; they run under their own separate rules and their own separate entry pages.

A business should read the ballot's own coverage claim at face value: Russellville. Anything broader than that is a judgment call left to the business, not a boundary the Courier has actually published.

Building a push around four years of history, not around guesswork

Four editions in, Best of the Best has already proven something a first-year ballot cannot: it comes back. Turning that into results for round five means picking real Russellville customers now, the ones who will actually open russellvillecourier.secondstreetapp.com once it goes live, instead of assuming last July's calendar simply repeats.

Round five's exact shape will not change this part: people asked twice beat people asked once, whether or not the Courier ever publishes a hard vote limit. Padded clicks or automated traffic put the whole entry at risk, and a program only four years deep has a slimmer history to fall back on if that happens.

A nomination and a win are not the same event; the Courier decides the second one alone. For the boundary between ordinary outreach and something that could backfire, see is buying votes legal. Readers weighing paid help specifically for a nominate-then-vote ballot can start with Buying votes online, and planning a push timed to a readers'-choice calendar gets its own separate treatment at award-vote campaign planning.