Midland Reporter-Telegram Readers' Choice: How Voting Works & How to Win

Two confirmed editions, four years apart: MRT Readers' Choice's real pattern

Unlike a ballot that closes and reopens on the same calendar every year, MRT Readers' Choice shows two confirmed editions on Second Street, 2021 and 2025, with a four-year gap between them and nothing published to fill it. The Midland Reporter-Telegram runs the ballot directly at midlandreportertelegram.secondstreetapp.com, folding nomination and voting into a single stage instead of running them back to back. The 2025 round ran March 31 through June 14, 2025, and that window has already closed.

Read that gap for what it is. Confirm on the live ballot each cycle, because a four-year stretch between confirmed rounds is not the pattern a business can plan a yearly campaign around.

One newspaper's own ballot, unlike Texas's metro-branded polls

The Midland Reporter-Telegram runs MRT Readers' Choice itself, unlike several larger Texas readers'-choice ballots built around a single metro's own magazine or newspaper brand. That distinction matters for a Midland business trying to find the right page to enter.

Judging panels, prize budgets, and winner lists stay separate across every one of these six programs; nothing earned on MRT Readers' Choice transfers to any of the other five. A Midland business entering several at once is really juggling unrelated deadlines and rulebooks rather than mounting one coordinated effort.

Why the four-year gap matters heading into any next round

Searching for a Midland business-awards ballot could just as easily turn up one of the larger metro programs above instead, or a page left over from 2021. Two confirmed rounds are the settled part of the story; whether the Midland Reporter-Telegram runs a third one soon, or waits years again, has not surfaced anywhere outside midlandreportertelegram.secondstreetapp.com itself.

Midland is the only market this ballot names

Midland is the market the Midland Reporter-Telegram names for MRT Readers' Choice, and the confirmed page draws no line beyond that. Across both editions, no neighboring-town list has ever sat on midlandreportertelegram.secondstreetapp.com, and nothing there spells out whose vote actually counts toward a nomination.

The same Midland Reporter-Telegram Second Street account also hosts a separate athletes-of-the-week ballot and quarterly sweepstakes, kept apart from MRT Readers' Choice and its own tally.

The Midland Reporter-Telegram itself uses one word for the market it names: Midland. Stretching that further is a call left to the business making it, not something the platform has spelled out either way.

Building a push without assuming next year is already scheduled

Two confirmed editions, four years apart, leave a Midland business with less of a fixed calendar to plan against than a ballot running an unbroken yearly schedule would offer. Building a short list of regulars ready to open midlandreportertelegram.secondstreetapp.com the moment the next round actually starts beats assuming it lands on any particular year.

Repeated, personal outreach beats a single blanket message when the calendar itself is this unpredictable, whatever gap ends up separating this round from the next one. Padding a tally with anything besides genuine votes puts the whole entry at risk, and an uneven history like this one gives an organizer less of a baseline to judge a sudden spike against than a program running the identical schedule every year would have. is buying votes legal separates a defensible campaign from one that crosses a line, worth reading before committing budget to a ballot that has not confirmed it will return. Buying votes online covers what paid help commonly involves for a ballot that combines nominating and voting into a single stage, and award-vote campaign planning is built around exactly the readers'-choice format the Midland Reporter-Telegram uses.