Kevin Hogencamp, the Atlantic Beach city manager, describes a gladiator problem in local government.

“ People who come to Commission meetings and other community meetings at City Hall here represent a really, really small, self-selected slice of our more than 13,000 residents,” he tells Jacksonville Today.

He hopes that a tool new to Atlantic Beach can help address the problem. FlashVote is a community engagement platform that sends quick surveys, about a minute long, to registered residents’ phones. The results of the surveys undergo statistical analysis, producing scientific and anonymous results. Atlantic Beach is promoting sign-up for the tool through its newsletter and on social media.

 “Rather than only hearing from the gladiators,” Hogencamp said, FlashVote “captures input from the people in the stands who don’t attend the meetings.”

More than 100 residents have signed up so far, and Hogencamp says that once they reach 200 the city will send out its first survey, one asking what parks and recreation programming residents want to see.

“ We are bringing on a new community center, a fourth community center this fall,” Hogencamp says. “And I am hoping that the scientific survey will go a long way toward helping us make decisions regarding programming at Marsh Oaks Community Center.”

FlashVote in Jacksonville Beach

FlashVote is already being used in over 30 states, according to co-founder and CEO Kevin Lyons. It first came to Northeast Florida when Jacksonville Beach implemented it in 2024.

When Jacksonville Beach recently started a pilot program allowing vendors on the boardwalk for the first time in almost 80 years, the city took to FlashVote to ask residents what kinds of activities they would like to see as part of the pilot program. Three-hundred-thirty residents responded.

“ I would’ve assumed that people wanted more, like, festivals, but only 18% of the people said that they want more cultural festivals,” Jax Beach spokesman Jacob Board says. “The thing that people want the most is more outdoor dining or cafe seating […]  it’s just good to have that feedback and know that we’re not just guessing.”

The FlashVote platform follows a lineage of survey-conducting that began with door-knocking, transitioned into landline calling, and then faced a crisis in the age of smartphones. Civic engagement platforms are now competing for attention against social media sites.

According to FlashVote’s founder, Lyons, it’s gotten really hard to convince people to take surveys. “You’re competing against empty dopamine hits,” he says.

After user testing, Lyons adapted. A FlashVote survey is 3-5 questions. Sign-up is advertised to take as little as 30 seconds.

And, Hogencamp says, FlashVote will not replace traditional civic engagement methods in Atlantic Beach. “ We want them to email us, we want them to come to meetings, we want them to participate in the scientific polling.” That’s a much, much more effective way of participating in our democratic representative form of government than venting on social media.”

And now, he says, participating in surveys is just as easy as typing out that impassioned Facebook comment.
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