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IRV, which stands for "Instant-Runoff Voting", is a type of voting for single-winner elections in which voters NUMBER their ballots according to their [preferences] (IE "1" for top candidate, "2" for their second-favorite candidate, etc.), rather than mark one with an "X" by his/her name.

Candidates must get a 50%+1 majority in order to be declared elected.  If nobody achieves said majority, then the candidate with the least amount of votes is dropped off and his/her votes transferred to other candidates until one candidate wins.

The intention is that a candidate has an absolute majority without any of the following:

1.  tactical voting (voting for a major candidate so that a reviled candidate doesn't win)
2.  spoiler effect (a third-party candidate "taking votes" from a major candidate)
3.  negative campaigning (where candidates campaign so that it's like "Vote for me and nobody else." -- INSTEAD, candidates would say, "In case I'm eliminated, make sure to send your votes to him/her.")

IRV was invented in 1870 by William Robert Ware (a U.S. American architect), who based it on the single-winner version of the multi-winner Single Transferable Vote, which itself was invented by Carl Andrae (a Danish politician and [mathematician]) and shaped by Thomas Hare (an English lawyer).

In national politics, IRV is used in the following countries (There may be more, but here's what I found so far.):

~ Australia (Australian House of Representatives; by the way, Australia's notorious for demanding that voters rank ALL of the candidates in order for a vote to be considered valid)
~ Ireland (Irish Presidency; Ireland's small and doesn't have to resort to an [electoral college] like the U.S.)
~ Fiji (Fijian House of Representatives)

Other names that IRV goes by are [Alternative] Voting, Preferential Voting, Ranked-Choice Voting, the Hare System (after Thomas Hare), and Ware's Method (after William Robert Ware).

(([I'm not] 100% sure if [Urban Dictionary] would approve of me listing websites here for [informational] and education purposes, but...))

For more [information] on IRV, you can visit http://www.instantrunoff.com/.

SOURCES USED:
~ Instant-Runoff Voting @ Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRV/)
~ Instant Runoff Voting (http://www.instantrunoffvoting.com/)

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