The correct way to look at IRV

We very rarely get the republican view point on Instant Run-off Voting mostly because we're to busy waiting for the liars on the Democrat side to do something on the issue to question the Republican perspective.

In debating a Republican it becomes clear they are more open to analyzing all sides of the global warming debate then to consider IRV. They will tell you IRV will elect fringe candidates yet IRV in fact will only elect mainstream candidates. Of course they can come up with examples of far left candidates winning under IRV, but that's mostly due to the fact that IRV only makes it's way into law in left leaning districts due to Republicans baseless opposition.

A lot of people like to look at Nader in 2000 or Peter Hutchinson in 2006 and use those elections along with some poll #'s to predict what might have happened with IRV, but without IRV in play there is no way of knowing how the prerun off portion of the election might have been different. In 2002 a poll came out a few days after Minnesota's Gubernatorial election asking voters if they cast their vote for their preferred candidate. An overwhelmingly large # answered no, yet those analyzing the effects of IRV don't look at it as freedom to vote for your first choice, rather they look at it as what will happen when the crazy non 2 party system voters are forced to choose between the two, and while in the case of the Green Party or say Constitution party it may be easy to predict the end result in the case of a Peter Hutchinson or Tim Penny it's not as easy to know what happens, after all the public did seem to like them in much larger #'s then the election results, and in the case of the 2002 election their is real evidence to suggest that Tim Penny would have been eliminated after at least one of his two party system opponents.

As the Democrats and Republicans view the possibility of a Michael Bloomberg run for president, it will be those parties that use a strong centrist candidate to move farther to the fringes. Despite what partisans might say Instant Run Off would guarantee a mainstream candidate whether or not the traditional parties choose to give us a mainstream option.