CommunityVotes Scranton (Times-Tribune): How Voting Works & How to Win

Scranton and Erie, side by side on the same platform

July 15 through November 8. That's the confirmed nomination window for both scranton.communityvotes.com and erie.communityvotes.com this cycle, two Pennsylvania cities on opposite sides of the state, running the identical CommunityVotes calendar. Neither newspaper shares an owner or a newsroom with the other; the shared dates come from the platform both license, not from any connection between the Times-Tribune and Erie Times-News.

That's worth knowing upfront, because it means a business researching one market's rules can reasonably expect the other to follow a similar structure, even while the two remain fully separate campaigns with separate categories and separate audiences.

What matters most about running on a shared national platform

CommunityVotes isn't a program the Times-Tribune built from scratch for Scranton alone. It's licensed software the newspaper adopted for its readers'-choice ballot, the same platform running under Erie's masthead a few hundred miles west. That explains why the mechanics feel familiar to anyone who's nominated a business on the Erie edition before: category-based nomination first, then a narrower finalist round once that window closes.

What's specific to Scranton is the confirmed coverage: the Times-Tribune's readership across Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and the wider Northeastern Pennsylvania region the paper actually serves. The platform sets the mechanics; the newspaper sets the market.

No public vote totals or category winner list for a prior CommunityVotes Scranton cycle turned up in the record checked here. That's stated directly rather than guessed at, the same honesty this guide applies to the Erie edition's own gaps.

Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and the towns between them

Scranton and Wilkes-Barre anchor Northeastern Pennsylvania's two largest markets, close enough geographically that many businesses in one city draw customers from the other. A restaurant in downtown Scranton and one in downtown Wilkes-Barre can plausibly compete in the same category on this single regional ballot rather than running separate city-only heats.

Dunmore and Dickson City sit close enough to Scranton to function almost as extensions of the city's own commercial corridor. Clarks Summit, further out, carries its own more suburban character. Kingston and Pittston fill out the Wilkes-Barre side of the valley, with Hazleton extending the region's reach further south.

That spread means a NEPA business's real competition on this ballot isn't necessarily the shop next door. It's whichever business in the region landed in the same category, which could be a rival forty minutes away in either direction along the valley.

How CommunityVotes Scranton differs from Pennsylvania's magazine-run polls

Pennsylvania runs several readers'-choice programs that have nothing to do with the CommunityVotes platform. Best of Philly runs through Philadelphia Magazine's own infrastructure. Best of Berks belongs to a regional lifestyle magazine further west of Scranton.

Best of the Lehigh Valley covers a different suburban corridor south of NEPA, and Best of the 'Burgh handles Pittsburgh on the far side of the state. None of these share a login, a category list, or a close date with CommunityVotes Scranton, and a business operating across regions needs a separate nomination for each one.

Even within the CommunityVotes family, Scranton and Erie's edition stay fully separate ballots. A win on one carries no weight on the other, since the platform doesn't share nominee data across its licensed markets.

Running an honest CommunityVotes Scranton campaign

The core approach doesn't change from any other readers'-choice push: real customers, pointed at the correct category page during the confirmed July 15-November 8 window, reminded again once finalist voting opens. See how online contest votes work for the general mechanics, and read is buying votes legal before setting a budget.

For readers'-choice and award-style formats specifically, the award-style vote campaign guide covers pacing that applies here too, timed to CommunityVotes Scranton's two-phase nomination-then-finalist structure rather than a single continuous ballot.

"Nominated for CommunityVotes Scranton 2026" is a claim a reader can verify against the live page. A bare "NEPA's best" with no platform or year attached risks getting confused with one of Pennsylvania's several other, unrelated readers'-choice programs, which is exactly the kind of vague claim worth avoiding here.