Following Burlington's first-ever Vermont election conducted by Instant Runoff Voting, supporters want to take the voting system statewide. And so this election was watched closely.

Its not clear if IRV really made any difference in the outcome. The plurality winner, Progressive Bob Kiss, fell just short of the 40% threshold required by the old system to avoid a runoff. Under IRV, an elimination process coupled with the allocation of voters' second choices, boosted Kiss to the 50% mark and victory.

It took a while to load the results from each polling place into a central computer. But once that was done, the IRV process took mere seconds. The city's elections director, Jo LaMarche, was relieved that the system worked without any major problems.

"It worked in -- what? Two rounds, so it was great," she said.

Progressives initiated a push for IRV by winning approval of the voting system at last year's Burlington city elections. Still, the Bob Kiss victory was a cliff hanger for them. Progressive party strategist John Franco said, "My big fear was the headline tomorrow was gong to be, Progressives Fall on Their Own Sword, that Bob would lead in the first round and lose the IRV. That was our nightmare."

Supporters of instant runoff voting want to see it enacted statewide, although Republicans tend to see it as an advantage to the left. But Rep. Kurt Wright (R-Burlington) said it bears examination. "I think the system we have is working fine, but let's take a breather, step back and look at this thing," he said. "We'll have to analyze how this whole thing worked."

Any move to take instant runoff voting statewide will run into political resistance. Governor Jim Douglas already has said he would veto it if it reached his desk. Certainly it will be debated and analyzed.

Did IRV actually affect the outcome of the election? We'll never know. Under the old system, Burlington would have held a special runoff election between the top vote-getters, Bob Kiss and Hinda Miller.