IRV in Action

Instant Runoff Voting is used worldwide and in a growing number of cities and communities throughout the U.S.  San Francisco  has used IRV with great success in six consecutive city-wide elections.  Burlington, VT uses IRV to elect its Mayor, and IRV is used statewide in Louisiana, Arkansas, and South Carolina, where overseas military voters can rank candidates on their absentee ballots, allowing them to take part in runoff elections. On Election Day 2009, Minneapolis conducted its first Instant Runoff Voting election and voters in the Twin City of St. Paul approved the use of IRV for local elections.

IRV is used in North Carolina for judicial elections and the state has also created an IRV pilot program for broader use in ten cities and ten counties. IRV has been approved for use by a number of cities including Ferndale, MI, and in the California cities of Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro and Davis. 

IRV is also used for student body elections at colleges and universities around the United States, including Harvard, Princeton, MIT, CalTech, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and Stanford. Many public and private organizations, including the American Political Science Association and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, use Instant Runoff Voting.

Cities and countries around the world have used ranked choice voting systems for decades. The Republic of Ireland has used IRV to elect its president since 1922. Australia has used ranked voting to elect its House of Representatives since 1949 and to elect most state and territory lower houses. Malta has used IRV to elect its president since 1921. Ranked voting is also used in London, Scotland and New Zealand.