Best of the Valley, PA Community's Choice Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

The full category slate, run in three dated phases for 2026

Best of the Valley, PA Community's Choice Awards is Gannett's readers'-choice ballot for Beaver Valley, Pennsylvania, published through a USA TODAY Network local paper and hosted on the Your Choice Awards platform at yourchoiceawards.com/beaver. Two confirmed editions exist, 2025 and 2026.

The confirmed 2026 cycle ran in three dated phases: a nomination round from February 6 through February 27, a voting round from April 15 through April 29, and a winners announcement on July 9. The nomination round covered the full category slate, and only the top five nominees in each category moved forward into the voting round.

What the confirmed page does not print is a per-voter cap, a one-vote-per-day rule, or the actual list of categories; confirm on the live ballot each cycle for either.

How a nomination becomes a vote in Beaver Valley

Gannett's page describes the sequence plainly: nominations open the process, and only the businesses that land in the top five of their category cross over into the April voting round. A business skipping straight to asking for votes without first securing real nomination support is missing the step that actually decides who even appears on the ballot.

Once the voting round closes, Gannett's page moves to a "Voting Closed" state and holds there until winners are announced, which the confirmed 2026 cycle set for July 9. That gap between voting closing and winners being announced runs roughly ten weeks, time in which nothing on the confirmed page changes for a supporter checking back.

What stays unconfirmed once the printed dates pass

February 6 through July 9 covers the entire confirmed 2026 calendar for this ballot. Beyond that window, whether the 2027 cycle repeats the same February-April-July rhythm is not something the page has stated in advance; confirm on the live ballot each cycle rather than assuming the calendar repeats exactly.

One market page among several Gannett runs in Pennsylvania

Beaver Valley's ballot is one of several Pennsylvania readers'-choice programs, and it is the only one on this list running through Gannett's Your Choice Awards platform specifically for this market. The others below sit under entirely separate regional publishers.

None of these six share a category roster, a nomination round, or a set of judges with Beaver Valley's own ballot, so results on one carry zero weight toward another, even for a business with locations spread across more than one of these markets.

Building nomination support before the top-five cutoff

Because only five nominees per category reach the voting round, the earlier decision, the nomination phase itself, carries more weight here than it does on a ballot without that cutoff. Lining up real customers to nominate a business by February 27 matters as much as anything that happens once April's voting round opens.

Once a business does reach the top five, the same principle from the nomination round carries into voting: real, repeated visits from actual Beaver Valley customers outperform a single burst of activity near the April 29 deadline, and outperform it further given how long the gap runs before Gannett confirms anything on July 9. is buying votes legal lays out the line separating a genuine supporter drive from a tactic that puts an entry at risk, useful reading before spending any budget on a ballot with a full category slate like this one. award-vote campaign planning is built around exactly this nominate-then-vote shape.