Elections staff to reinstate officer evaluations with single-sheet grading form

Harrisonburg City Electoral Board meeting — Director of Elections Mark Vink told the board Oct. 6 he is recommending that precinct chiefs complete officer evaluations using a single consolidated spreadsheet, replacing the older multi-sheet process.

Vink said the single-sheet approach should be easier for chiefs to manage on Election Day than 11 or 12 separate sheets per precinct. The proposed form uses a grading scale of "0 to 4," he said, and the office will prefill officer names to ease the workload. "We're gonna add some more, this we're gonna add some more of these, metrics from the original sheet over to here," Vink said, describing it as a draft the office will finalize and show at the upcoming chief training.

Vink noted prior peer-evaluation practices "caused problems" and "people have not felt very comfortable with evaluating each other," so the new form focuses on a shorter checklist intended to produce usable data for staffing and training decisions. He said chiefs should, if possible, complete the form on Election Day but that the office will accept completed evaluations after the election if necessary.

The office plans to review the collected evaluations after the canvass and present aggregated findings to the board in the following months; Vink said he and staff would likely analyze the results in December and report back next year.

The recommendation drew no formal objection from the board during the Oct. 6 meeting; staff said they would present the final form to chiefs at the chief training later in the month.