Harrisonburg City Electoral Board meeting — Director of Elections Mark Vink told the board Oct. 6 the office has invited Printelec to demonstrate DS200 tabulation equipment and that the demonstration will be a public, non-business meeting on Oct. 20 in Rooms 11 and 12, with a proposed 9 a.m. start time.

Vink described the planned meeting as a public demonstration rather than a regular business meeting: he said the board would not have to approve minutes and that the vendor would present equipment so board members and the public could view it. "We have asked mister Links from Printelec to come to do a presentation on the, the d s 300 equipment," Vink said (transcript phrasing). He added the office could invite other local electoral boards to view the demonstration.

Staff also walked the board through poll-pad and same-day-registration flow and training. Vink described a workflow in which voters first complete envelope information at an information table, then proceed to a check station where a poll pad lookup confirms registration or determines whether to issue a provisional ballot or send the voter to the regular line. He said larger precincts such as JMU, Stone Spring and Smithland could use two poll-pad stations, while smaller precincts would likely use a single poll pad for lookups and check-in.

Vink outlined a consolidated training and pre-election calendar: the week of Oct. 20 will include, in sequence, info-officer training, poll-pad ("pull pad") officer training and chief training; Oct. 25 will be the first Saturday of early voting and the office's page training; Oct. 28 will be the first day of pre-processing from noon to 5 p.m.; Nov. 1 is the last day of early voting; Nov. 2 is programming of poll pads; Nov. 3 is polling-location setup and supply pickup; the office schedules the post-election canvas to start at 11 a.m. the day after the election, with further processing (including provisional ballots and duplicate-list returns) continuing through Nov. 12, the deadline for submitting election paperwork.

Vink said the State Board of Elections will conduct a random drawing for a risk-limiting audit (RLA) around its meeting on Oct. 18; if Harrisonburg's House of Delegates district were selected, the likely RLA date would be Nov. 20. "Of course, we have a 1 in 100 chance since there's a 100 House of Delegates district," he said, explaining the random selection process. He said the state recently voted to use a smaller-sample RLA method that extracts one or two ballots for batch comparison, which would shorten local audit time if selected.

Vink asked whether the board wanted the Printelec demonstration at 9 a.m. or a later hour; the board left the start time at 9 as proposed. Staff said they would provide meeting-notice language for the non-business public demo and invite neighboring localities if desired.