Morning Call Readers' Choice: How Voting Works & How to Win

A newspaper ballot with nine straight confirmed editions

The Morning Call has published Readers' Choice every year confirmed since 2018, closing rounds in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and, most recently, 2026, nine confirmed editions in all on Second Street at mcall.secondstreetapp.com. The 2026 round opened July 12 and closed August 17.

The Morning Call is headquartered in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and publishes Readers' Choice from that address. Past the confirmed window, the page's detail thins out fast: no category roster, no per-supporter cap, no eligibility note beyond the dates themselves. A newspaper with nine consecutive confirmed rounds behind it has clearly kept the ballot running every year, even while leaving the finer print for each cycle's own live page to settle.

Nine straight confirmed years is a longer run than several other readers'-choice ballots in this network can show, which is worth weighing against how thin the published rules are past the dates themselves.

One publisher, two separate public-vote programs

The Morning Call does not stop at Readers' Choice. The same publisher also runs Morning Call Athlete of the Week, a separate sports fan-vote ballot with its own schedule and its own confirmed results, published under the same masthead but judged entirely apart from the readers'-choice program on this page.

A business or a supporter should not assume the two share a single vote count or a single set of rules; they are two separate promotions that happen to answer to the same publisher.

Pennsylvania's other readers'-choice ballots run under separate publishers

Several other Pennsylvania readers'-choice programs use a similar nominate-and-vote format but answer to publishers with no connection to The Morning Call: Best of Philly (Philadelphia Magazine), Best of Berks (Berks County Living Magazine), Best of the Lehigh Valley (Lehigh Valley Style), Best of the 'Burgh, Bucks County & Chester County Readers' Choice and Erie Reader Best of Erie. None of those six shares a results page with Readers' Choice, so a strong showing on one has zero bearing on how any of the others turn out.

Allentown as headquarters, not a fixed coverage boundary

Allentown, Pennsylvania is where The Morning Call is based, and that is the detail its own listing confirms. The current Readers' Choice page does not draw a boundary at Allentown's own city limits, so a business elsewhere in the paper's readership is not obviously excluded from a ballot published from that address.

Nothing in The Morning Call's current promotion list ties a sweepstakes or a photo vote to Readers' Choice under the same account beyond Athlete of the Week, already covered above; the readers'-choice ballot remains its own confirmed promotion for the year.

Building a push around nine years of confirmed editions

Nine straight editions give Readers' Choice a deeper base of confirmed history than most ballots in this network, even though the category list and the vote rules stay unpublished from one year to the next. That depth is a reason to take the ballot seriously, not a substitute for confirming this particular cycle's own rules before spending real effort chasing it.

Real supporters, contacted directly and reached out to again across the window rather than once near the deadline, are what has kept this ballot running nine straight years without interruption. A vote pattern that looks padded or automated puts the entire entry at risk, and a flag on a program with this many confirmed editions behind it draws more scrutiny than the identical flag would on one just starting out.

A nomination landing on the ballot and a category actually being won are two different outcomes, and only The Morning Call decides the second once its own count closes. Before committing budget to a future round, is buying votes legal is worth reading first, since it sets out where ordinary supporter outreach stops and riskier tactics begin. Buying votes online and award-vote campaign planning both go deeper on how a paid push works for a long-running readers'-choice ballot like this one.