MassLive / Springfield Republican Reader Raves: How Voting Works & How to Win

A 'Reader Raves' ballot, not a 'Best of' ballot

Reader-Raves-2027. That's the confirmed name in the ballot's own URL, and it's worth pausing on, because most Massachusetts readers' choice programs brand themselves "Best of [City]." MassLive and the Springfield Republican didn't. A Springfield business searching for "Best of Springfield voting" by the more common phrase could miss this program's actual page.

The mechanic underneath that name is a standard Second Street online ballot, the same widget platform used by numerous regional newspaper vote programs nationwide, hosted at masslive.secondstreetapp.com. Readers pick favorite local businesses by category across Springfield and the surrounding Western Massachusetts market.

Not published in what was checked for this guide: a vote cap, a fixed close date, or a full category list. Treat the live masslive.secondstreetapp.com ballot as the source for whatever this table doesn't cover.

Springfield has two competing readers' choice programs, not one

A Western Massachusetts business researching "how do I get votes in Springfield" may not realize there are two separate ballots to consider. Best of the Valley, run by the alt-weekly Valley Advocate, has covered Pioneer Valley and Western Massachusetts for more than three decades from a different publisher entirely. Reader Raves, from MassLive and the daily Springfield Republican, is a separate program with its own platform and its own branding.

A business isn't limited to one or the other; nothing about entering Reader Raves excludes a business from Best of the Valley's ballot, since the two run on different platforms with no shared vote count. A campaign covering both needs two separate reminder messages, though, since a supporter voting on one ballot hasn't automatically voted on the other.

Why the year-dated URL matters for a campaign

Reader-Raves-2027 isn't a permanent address the way some programs' voting pages are. MassLive appears to structure each cycle under its own year-specific URL on the Second Street platform, which means a link saved or shared from a previous year risks pointing at a closed or expired ballot rather than the live one.

That has a direct, practical consequence for outreach: a business reusing last year's saved link in a new campaign could send supporters to a dead page instead of the current ballot. Checking that the URL's year matches the current cycle before sending any reminder is a small step that avoids wasted turnout.

For general mechanics on running a readers'-choice campaign on a Second Street-style platform, award-style vote campaigns covers ground that applies here, and businesses in food and beverage categories specifically may find the restaurant vote campaign guide useful for pacing reminders around a shared ballot like this one.

Springfield's metro towns and who actually casts these votes

Springfield anchors the region, with Chicopee, Holyoke, West Springfield, Westfield, Agawam, Longmeadow, and East Longmeadow forming the rest of the metro's commercial footprint. A business in any of these towns falls within the confirmed Western Massachusetts coverage area, competing on the same category page as a downtown Springfield entrant rather than in a separate town-level heat.

Holyoke and Chicopee both carry distinct manufacturing and mill-town histories that shape which categories draw the heaviest local turnout, restaurants, breweries, and services with deep multi-generational customer bases especially. That's the kind of local network a campaign here should lean on directly, not a generic "share on social media" instruction.

A business that overstates a Reader Raves result risks that claim being checked against MassLive's own published coverage, in a media market small enough that the correction gets noticed.

Running an honest campaign on a Second Street ballot

Send real customers the current year's exact masslive.secondstreetapp.com link, confirm it matches the live cycle before sharing it broadly, and repeat the reminder more than once across the open period. That's the practical playbook available from the confirmed record, since no per-day cap or precise close date is published to plan more tightly around.

A vote-promotion service can help a Western Massachusetts business reach supporters who already know the business, pointed at the correct current-year ballot. It can't guarantee a category outcome once every other nominee's supporters have also voted, and it can't substitute for confirming the live URL is actually the current cycle's page. See how online contest votes work for the general mechanics, and read is buying votes legal before committing budget to a campaign on either of Springfield's two readers' choice programs.