I just sent the following counterpoint to the Star Tribune.
FairVoteMN's Jeanne Massey's editorial in defense of Instant Runoff Voting(IRV) misses the most important point. Most local municipal elections are usually not competitive and elections need to be competitive to get more people to take interest in them. As such, IRV alone is weak medicine for what ails our democracy.
If we really want to cause a sea change in our state politics then we need strategic election reform: the use of both single and multi-seated elections, with the latter being used in more local elections and possibly the open primaries for the former. In Minneapolis, this could be done by simplifying the thirteen wards into four super-wards and electing three city council members per super-ward, with IRV used for a thirteenth at-large council member. But we would not need to use rankings for a three-seated election. If a Hare Largest Remainder(LR) rule were used for the three-seated elections then the election would be almost like our current elections. There would be one candidate per party and one vote per voter but now the third seat would become competitive, which would attract more voter interest and participation.
As such, we don't need to reject IRV to recognize that what we really need is to use three-seated elections in more local elections, like for city councilmembers or state representatives, to spice up our politics. The three-seated Hare LR election rule would not require any changes in voting machinery. It would be "one man, one vote" and would thereby not necessarily warrant as much opposition from the Republican party. And, unlike with IRV, it would go a long ways to help Local Third parties* win some seats and a much more constructive role in our political system.
dlw
*Local Third (LT) parties are my expression for third parties that specialize in contesting local winnable elections and otherwise engage in civil-issue advocacy, in part through voting strategically together. An example of this would be the Progressive Dane party in Dane County of WI.
ps, Jeanne Massey sent me an email response to the above letter. Her major point was that since single-member elections (for mayor) are inevitable, there is a need for IRV and she and her organization had decided to push for only one electoral reform at a time, prioritizing the use of ranked-choices over the use of multi-seated elections.
This difference in priorities for electoral reform is our major area of disagreement. I believe the pragmatic use of 3-seated election rules for more local elections is a much higher priority than the use of ranked choices or what-not.