I like the idea of IRV, however, it requires a higher level of integrity and accuracy in our voting process. We need to fix the integrity of our voting process as a prerequisite to IRV.
There are two pressures we need to deal with. One is the pressure for instant results, to have the total and the winner shortly after the polls close on election night - so we count fast, use electronic voting machines and declare a winner as quickly as possible. Then there is pressure on all those involved in the voting process to avoid the work and potential embarrassment of a recount which might show that they did not conduct a perfect election or count accurately.
For instance in Connecticut:
Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz says that Diebold optical scan voting machines "showed no significant problems". However, November election audit data reported discrepancies of over 10 votes in 14 races in just the towns of East Hartford and Wethersfield, with the highest discrepancies being 72, 82, and 105. Each is greater than the margin in Glastonbury for State Representative and near the 91 vote margin in the entire 2nd Congressional race.
(Also note that the recanvass of the 2nd District race for Optical Scan towns was performed by reprocessing ballots thru the machines - no manual recount was performed - no audits were performed, as the 2nd District was exempted from the audits)
Once again, I strongly support IRV, yet we have to have the patience to count accurately in the first place, while having the fortitude to perform accurate audits and recounts after the face. IRV takes more of this and would be more than worth it.
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