Is instant runoff voting is simple for voters to use?
Yes. The voters’ task is very simple. Voters can simply mark their ballots in exactly the same way as they always have in the past. However, the voter has the option of ranking alternate choices, in case there is no majority winner and the voter’s favorite candidate doesn’t make it into the final runoff count. Since a vote for a minor candidate won’t be wasted, as long as the voter ranks other choices, the voter can generally avoid the conundrum of voting for a favorite or a lesser evil. For many voters this makes voting with IRV easier than under the current plurality method. U.S. cities that recently adopted IRV have had exit polls to assess voter acceptance of the new system. Without exception, in every city voters have overwhelmingly favored IRV over the old method. Also, studies of the San Francisco and Burlington IRV elections have proven that there was no increase in uncountable ballots (spoiled or skipping the IRV race) with the adoption of IRV. In the Burlington IRV election i
