As a Libertarian, I find many of my colleagues enamored with the concept of Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). I'm not one of them.

To those not acquainted with the concept, I'll give you an overly simplistic explanation to get you started. The concept of IRV is that, when you vote, you vote for your candidates in order of preference. Points are assigned based on the candidate's standing, and if no candidate wins a majority on the first ballot, they filter out candidates based on points until one emerges a "clear" winner.

This would, ostensibly help third party and independent candidates. In the long run, though, I feel it would greatly harm the electoral process. To begin with, a transition to IRV would require a massive reeducation campaign. We have a hard enough time getting over 50% of our eligible voters to the polling places in the first place; expecting them to learn a new system would be problematic to say the least.

Then there's the potential for the second most popular choice to win the election by being the most commonly listed number two candidate. With IRV, Ross Perot could have possibly won the 1992 Presidential election, and Ralph Nader could have possibly won the 2000 presidential election, and both would have almost certainly won some electoral votes, possibly enough to prevent either of the "big two" candidates from obtaining a majority of electoral votes. This means the 2000 Presidential election could have been chosen by the House of Representatives, which would have led to an even greater outcry by the voting public. And I won't even BEGIN to detail the numerous voter fraud possibilities of such a system.

The creators of the IRV concept deserve credit for bringing to the forefront a potential solution to spur public debate on the topic of election reform. Although the idea is innovative, I do not believe it is a practical solution. But we shouldn't drop the ball on this debate for that reason alone, but rather use it as a starting point to explore options where the will of the public is better reflected in our votes.