Maine Congressional District 2 (2018) Ranked Choice Voting Replication by Nathan Tefft, Ph.D., 11/29/2018
This notebook uses an open source platform to replicate the Maine Congressional District 2 ranked choice voting results certified to the Governor on 11/26/18 (obtained from https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/results/results18.html#Nov6).
The replication implements the rank-choiced voting rules as provided in 21-A M.R.S.A. Chapter 723-A, sub-chapter 1, described at https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming/pdf/250rcvnew.pdf.
Although the rules allow for a "batch elimination" based on mathematical impossibility (used by the Secretary of State's office), I simply run subsequent instant runoffs to demonstrate the equivalence of the two approaches.
The replication notebook was specifically written for the Maine Congressional District 2 race (2018), so it would need to be modified to replicate other races.
12/4/2018 UPDATE: I added the python script replicate_rcv.py to the project. The script should be run in the same directory with the Excel files containing the ranked-choice ballots. While the above notebook demonstrates the Maine Congressional District 2 race (2018) replication, this script generalizes the replication process in order to allow for easy replications of all future ranked-choice voting races (only the Excel file importation process need be adjusted for future races).