Sports polls (like the AP top 25 and others) are created by merging a
bunch of individual polls into one.  How does that work?  I want to
apply similar logic to a problem I have:

9 people are ranking 80 items from 1-80, no ties.  Their rankings may
be similar or very different (hard to say before I see them).  In the
end, I want to come out with a single list ranked 1-80, that looks
most "right", based on how the items were ranked by the most people. 
What's the best way to do this?

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Clarification of Question by vla1-ga on 08 Nov 2004 10:52 PST

Extra credit given for a good answer that includes some code I can get
into Excel that will apply the algorithm.

Why not something simple like this...

Take the 80 items and give them each a score equal to the sums of
their ranks from the 9 people's list. Then sort this new list from
lowest to highest score.