Support Instant Runoff Voting!
The IRV bill, S.108, passed the Senate last year, and is up for action in the House Appropriations Committee when the legislature reconvenes shortly. Although S.108 has been pared down to just U.S. Congressional elections, it is a vital step to improve our democracy.
 
What are the advantages and benefits of IRV.
IRV is simple for voters to use. Burlington used IRV in its last mayoral election flawlessly.The vast majority of voters preferred it, and had no difficulty using the new ballot, with 99.9% of ballots cast being valid. U.S. Rep. Peter Welch supports the use of IRV in his re-election bid.

Instant runoff voting assures majority rule rather than simply allowing the candidate with the highest vote total in a multi-candidate race to win. Under existing law, a "winner" might actually be the candidate the majority of the voters consider to be the WORST choice.
 
Instant runoff voting reduces the problem of "spoilers," and "wasted votes."

IRV has been endorsed by the Vermont League of Women Voters, Vermont Common Cause, the Vermont AFL-CIO, and even the Vermont State Grange.

Howard Dean has endorsed IRV and former Republican gubernatorial candidate Ruth Dwyer was a co-sponsor of an IRV bill when she was in the House of Representatives.

IRV is recommended over our current voting method in modern editions of Robert's Rules of Order because it can find a majority winner in a single election no matter how many candidates are running.

Instant runoff voting is a proven system used in democracies around the world, like Australia, the Republic of Ireland, and to elect the Mayor of London, England, as well as San Francisco, Burlington, VT and some communities in North Carolina.

The Utah Republican Party uses IRV for their congressional nominations, and Louisiana and Arkansas use it for absentee voting.

The Vermont Secretary of State has reported there is no need to buy any new voting machines, or change the way ballots are counted locally to implement IRV, since any IRV tally would be done at regional centers after the election. The added cost for this is trivially small.

IRV is usually less expensive than two-round runoff voting, because polls need to be staffed, and ballots need to be printed only once. When an election would not have required an actual runoff round, IRV may be more expensive. Records of the San Francisco Department of Elections show that before IRV, a runoff round was required far more often than not in that city, where in 2000, 9 out of 10 contested races went to runoffs.

At a national level IRV is used to elect the Australian House of Representatives,^[1] the President of Ireland, the national parliament of Papua New Guinea and the Fijian House of Representatives. In the United States, it was used historically in various places, such as Ann Arbor, Michigan, later rescinded, and has recently been adopted in a number of local jurisdictions, most notably San Francisco. In the United Kingdom, a form of IRV is used to elect the mayor of London.

How Instant Runoff Voting Works.
IRV allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference (i.e. first, second, third, fourth and so on). Voters have the option to rank as many or as few candidates as they wish, but can vote without fear that ranking less favored candidates will harm the chances of their most preferred candidates. First choices are then tabulated, and if a candidate receives a majority of first choices, he or she is elected. If nobody has a clear majority of votes on the first count, a series of runoffs are simulated, using each voter’s preferences indicated on the ballot. The candidate who received the fewest first place choices is eliminated. All ballots are then re-tabulated, with each ballot counting as one vote for each voter's highest ranked candidate who has not been eliminated. Specifically, voters who chose the now-eliminated candidate will now have their ballots counted for their second ranked candidate -- just as if they were voting in a traditional two-round runoff election -- but all other voters get to continue supporting their top candidate. The weakest candidates are successively eliminated and their voters' ballots are redistributed to next choices until a candidate crosses a majority of votes.

So why is IRV not already part of the way we elect our official?
Instant runoff voting is more complex, both in terms of casting votes and counting them, than simpler systems such as 'first-past-the-post' plurality. Voters have the power to rank candidates in order of choice rather than merely write an 'x' beside a single candidate. Changing from plurality to IRV may therefore require the reprogramming of voting machinery, although several counties still count ballot by hand.

Forms of IRV have been implemented in cities using optical scan machines, as in San Francisco, California and Burlington, Vermont. A hand count also is possible under IRV and was the method used in the Cary, North Carolina pilot program in October, 2007 (after initially counting first choices on optical scan equipment at the polls) and in most non-U.S. jurisdictions; however it is usually more time-consuming than a plurality count, and may need to occur over a number of rounds.

Plurality supporters point to the fact that most elections in the U.S. use plurality voting, and voters seem to accept plurality winners as legitimate. The fact that some revered leaders, such as Abraham Lincoln, did not receive a majority of the vote is sometimes mentioned.

It can be claimed that the spoiler effect is not a weakness but a strength because it encourages and rewards like-minded candidates and voters to work together before the election. This encourages the formation of strong coalitions or parties, who attempt to best represent a collective position to the largest set of voters they can. Thus once an election is held, all compromising work has been completed and it's up to the voters to decide a first choice and accept the results as best.

Then there is the status quo to content with; Because IRV would dramatically alter the way we elect members of congress and the president, there is great resistance from both major parties. Since IRV would allow people to vote for the preferred candidate, and also for the candidate that is likely to win, without fear that a vote for their favorite candidate would cause their second choice candidate to lose. Both parties fear that the minority third parties like the green party, or the independent party might actually gain power and win elections.

The real reason to support IRV is that we as voters actually get a chance to elect the people that can do the most good, and not the "lesser of two evils" choice that we are stuck with now. We need to make sweeping changes in this country, starting with how we vote and who gets elected, in order to really start addressing the climate changes and biosphere collapse that we are seeing now.