[EM] San Francisco IRV Counting rules & possible bad ballots

[Eric Gorr]

I found the reason why my counts were different from the official tally 
for District 9, but this leads to more confusion on how the ballots were 
counted...is anyone more familiar with the IRV counting rules used in SF 
then myself?

First, there were only 7 candidates in the race...6 named and 1
qualified write-in candidate.

The candidates were numbered 01 - 07.

The number 1040, 1041 & 1042 are only used to indicate the position a
voter placed a candidate in their ranking.


My first question involves was the candidate codes 08 & 09 correspond
to...does anyone know?


Would these ballots ever contribute anything to the tally in any round?

    1040-09 1041-01 1042-02
    1040-08 1041-01 1042-02
    1040-09 1041-08 1042-02

It is clear they would not contribute anything to the first round tally.


Consider these ballots:

    1040-01 1041-08 1042-02
    1040-01 1041-09 1042-02

Assume that candidate 01 was eliminated, would any votes ever get
transferred to candidate 02?


The data I am using comes from:

http://web.sfgov.org/site/election_index.asp?id=28171