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

A new title, Best of the Plateau, after 2025's Best of Enumclaw

In 2025, the Enumclaw Courier-Herald ran a ballot called Best of Enumclaw. For 2026, the same organizer's Second Street listing carries a different title, Best of the Plateau, open August 12 through October 8. Because the title changed, this page treats Best of the Plateau as its own program with one confirmed edition, not as a second year of Best of Enumclaw under a new name.

Nothing published explains why the title changed, and nothing on the current listing states whether "Best of the Plateau" is the name the Enumclaw Courier-Herald plans to keep going forward. What is confirmed is narrower: a single open window, no category roster, and no per-voter cap.

This is the first confirmed edition; whether it returns next year is not yet published; confirm on the live ballot each cycle rather than treating the Best of Enumclaw calendar as a guide to Best of the Plateau's own future.

One newspaper ballot among several separate Washington 'best of' programs

Best of the Plateau runs on Second Street, a ballot platform a number of regional newspapers license for their own readers'-choice contests. Washington already carries several other such programs, each under its own publisher and, in most cases, its own separate platform.

A nomination submitted through Best of the Plateau carries no weight in any of the six programs above; each one keeps its own ballot, its own results, and its own rulebook entirely apart from the Enumclaw Courier-Herald's listing.

Why the exact web address matters here

With the title changed from Best of Enumclaw to Best of the Plateau and only one confirmed edition under the new name, no long-settled search pattern points back to this ballot yet. Typing enumclawcourierherald.secondstreetapp.com directly is the safer route rather than trusting whichever result a general search happens to surface.

Enumclaw and the Courier-Herald's own Plateau readership

Enumclaw sits in King County, Washington, on the stretch of land locally known as the Plateau. The Enumclaw Courier-Herald describes its own coverage as reaching Enumclaw itself along with Black Diamond and Buckley, so a ballot titled "the Plateau" already points past Enumclaw's own city limits on the organizer's own terms, not a boundary this page is adding.

Nothing on the Second Street listing spells out a separate eligibility radius for Black Diamond or Buckley businesses. Since the newspaper running Best of the Plateau already treats all three towns as part of the same readership, a shared ballot link has little reason to stay confined to just one town's limits.

A business drawing customers from Black Diamond or Buckley has as much standing on this ballot as one located inside Enumclaw proper, since the organizer's own description of its coverage already reaches that far.

Supporting a newly renamed, first-edition ballot honestly

With one confirmed window, August 12 through October 8, 2026, and a title that only just replaced Best of Enumclaw, the sound approach is reaching real Plateau-area customers before the window closes rather than borrowing rules from the 2025 program that carried a different name. This is the first confirmed edition; whether it returns next year is not yet published; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

None of that uncertainty makes a support push pointless; it just means grounding it in what is actually confirmed. Direct, repeated outreach to real supporters is what moves a ballot at this early stage, regardless of whether next year's edition keeps the Plateau title, reverts to Best of Enumclaw, or changes again. Second Street's own systems watch every ballot it runs for irregular activity, and getting flagged on a program still one edition into a brand-new title costs more here than the identical mistake would on a contest with ten seasons of settled results already behind it.

Getting nominated is one outcome; the Enumclaw Courier-Herald alone decides the winners once its own count closes. Is buying votes legal draws the line between an ordinary support campaign and a riskier one, and award-vote campaign planning walks through the specifics for a readers'-choice ballot shaped like this one.