Can’t wait for the city’s official RCV results? Neither could I. Steve Hill of the New America Foundation is unhappy that the city is waiting until Friday afternoon to run the RCV program, expecially since all the information you need to run it is now available — and public.
So Caleb Kleppner, one of Hill’s allies in the voting-reform movement, did the work himself. Here’s Hill’s message:
Attached to this email are the PRELIMINARY RCV results, as a result of running the tabulation on the ballot images posted on the Department of Elections website at 4:30 today. The tabulation was run by Caleb Kleppner of True Ballot (caleb@trueballot.com). The download of the ballot image zip file took about 30 seconds.
Mr. Kleppner then converted the ballot images into input files using a software program and then ran all the tallies on another program called Choice Plus Pro. Mr. Kleppner tells me that he ran the results for all four races in about 12 minutes, which shows you how easy it is to do (which means Sequoia could have done the same thing on election night, or Wednesday, or today, if Director Arntz had instructed them to do so. In fact, according to the file on the web, the Department of Elections produced the master file that defined all the candidates and elections at 11:47 am PT this morning and the ballot image file at 2:47 pm. At that point it would have been a simple additional step – just a few keystrokes on the computer – to run the tabulation, and twelve minutes later they would have had all the results. It’s really that simple).
Here are the usual words of caution for any election: These are PRELIMINARY results. Just as any other election has preliminary results, so do RCV races. I have been told that there are still approximately 110,000 absentee and provisional ballots to process, so for any races that are extremely close (whether RCV or non-RCV) it’s always good to keep in mind that preliminary results are not final results, and results can change. RCV is no different in that way than any other type of electoral method.
The results from this prelim run: Mar in D1, Chiu in D3, Campos in D9 and Avalos in D11. I don’t think the absentees will change much.
Again: I didn’t run this program, and I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the results. But I can vouch for Steve and Caleb, so this is at least worth perusing.