Does IRV delay announcing election results?
Not necessarily. As with typical plurality elections, unofficial results can usually be announced quickly. And as with typical plurality elections, there is always some chance that the final official results could be different. With IRV, all precincts must report before it can be determined if a candidate has an immediate majority, and if not, which candidates need to be eliminated in the next round of the count. However, it is certainly possible to immediately provide unofficial results by running the tally software on partial returns (recognizing that, as with any unofficial results, there remains a possibility that the outcome may change when all provisional ballots or absentee ballots are included). As an example, when Burlington (VT) held its first IRV election for mayor in 2006, the polls closed at 7:00 p.m. and the IRV tally was done and the final results were announced just over an hour and a half later, at 8:37 p.m. If a jurisdiction does not use voting machine hardware or sof
