Sandy Baird's recent letter condemning instant runoff voting (IRV) as diminishing democracy doesn't make sense to me. Baird admits that IRV worked smoothly in Burlington, that it resolves the "spoiler" issues of third party candidates, that with IRV people can vote for their favorite candidate instead of voting against their least favorite, and that Burlington mayoral winner, Bob Kiss, would have won with or without IRV. This is failure? I wish all our elections could fail this well.

No, Bob Kiss' victory aside, I think the clear winner in Burlington was IRV, which I hope paves the way for the rest of the state to follow.

ROBIN CHESNUT-TANGERMAN
Middletown Springs