Opponents of IRV have quoted a fiscal note for an IRV bill before the Maryland legislature in 2006 estimating a high cost for implementation. Is this estimate valid?
No. The assumptions underlying that fiscal note do not apply to any other jurisdiction, nor even to Maryland any more. Some opponents of IRV taut the fiscal note attached to the 2006 IRV bill in Maryland as proof of a very high cost for implementation. According to Donna Duncan, of the Maryland Election Management Division, who provided the cost estimates to the legislative staff, those estimates were based on an extremely tight three-month implementation timeline based on the bills effective date. All of those cost estimates were removed from the fiscal note for the 2008 IRV bill. Jurisdictions that have actually gone through the IRV implementation process have seen dramatically lower costs than the Maryland estimate. Both Burlington (VT) and Cary (NC) estimate the incremental costs of implementing IRV to be around $10,000, which includes voter education, and substantially less than the cost of holding an entirely separate runoff election. The costs of the Cary (NC) IRV election are d
