CARRBORO -- What would save North Carolina taxpayers $3 million, give more power to voters and make elections as easy as 1, 2, 3? Instant runoff voting," or rank voting, may be the best way to hold an election that you may never have heard about.

Here's how it works. Under instant runoff voting, you can mark your choices among the candidates in an election: 1, 2, 3. If no candidate receives enough No. 1 choices for a clear victory and a runoff is necessary, all candidates except the top two vote-getters are eliminated, just as in the current system.

But rather than hold a runoff on a new day, election officials just recalculate the same ballots. If your No. 1 choice was eliminated, your vote now automatically goes to the runoff candidate you ranked best. Those reallocated votes are added to the counts of the top two vote-getters, and the candidate with the most votes wins.

Voters don't have to rank more candidates than they want, but marking a second choice can be important if your top choice doesn't make the "virtual" runoff.

The current method of holding a separate runoff several weeks after Election Day is a mess. The one held in 2004 to pick the Democrats' nominee for state superintendent of public instruction cost about $3 million and only 3 percent of the registered Democrats showed up. The same thing happened in 2000 with a Republican runoff to pick nominees for agricultural and labor commissioners.

Local runoff elections happen every year and, over and over, the tiny group who return to the polls picks a winner who came in second when a much larger number of voters participated.

A bill to begin instant runoff voting (HB-1024), sponsored by Rep. Paul Luebke of Durham, passed the state House on May 18 with solid bipartisan support, 79 to 32, and is now in the Senate. In its current form, the bill would create a pilot program that allows up to 10 counties to use a rank-voting method, with State Board of Elections approval and supervision, to avoid the expense and problems of runoff elections in their local elections.

Luebke's bill was originally designed to provide instant runoff voting in statewide primaries, but legislators thought it would be best to try it out on a smaller scale. County governments have an incentive to try new methods, because they pay the cost of runoff elections, not the state, but county policymakers also need to be sure any new method works smoothly -- because if it doesn't, they will pay the price with their local voters.

Besides saving taxpayers (and candidates) the cost of a second election, instant runoff voting provides other benefits. It ensures that the winner is chosen with higher voter participation than when voters are asked to return for a runoff. It gives everyone an immediate choice in deciding which of the leading candidates should win, so no one's vote is "wasted." It eases the administrative burden on election officials who run one election, not two. And, as an added benefit, it turns out that instant runoff voting improves the tone of campaigns, because rather than slash-and-trash the opposition, candidates want to appeal to their opponents' supporters in order to get their No. 2 ranking.

Instant runoff voting, or rank-voting, is becoming more popular and has such diverse uses as choosing the Republican nominees for statewide elections in Utah, electing San Francisco's mayor and selecting the Heisman Trophy winner. In Louisiana, more than 10,000 out-of-state military and overseas voters received instant runoff voting ballots in 2004. Neighboring Arkansas adopted a similar law this year.

The governor of Washington signed a bipartisan bill this April that will allow instant runoff voting for a pilot program in three major cities. Student governments use instant runoff voting on many campuses, including at Wake Forest, William & Mary, Clemson, Princeton, Rice and the University of Virginia. Many corporations and trade associations also use it to pick their boards of directors.

Now, it's North Carolina's turn.

HB 1024, Instant Runoff Voting Pilot, creates an option that county boards of elections can voluntarily accept, especially if they have voting machines easily adapted to instant runoff voting. The State Board of Elections would maintain oversight over the whole process.

This is an excellent opportunity to learn valuable lessons for how instant runoff voting can work in North Carolina and whether it offers the best solution to the many problems of statewide runoff elections.

(Adam Sotak is an organizer with Democracy North Carolina, based in Carrboro. More on instant runoff voting is at fairvote.org and democracy-nc.org)