Run off voting

I was talking to a friend today and he mentioned run off voting as a viable option to our current election process. I realized I had no clue as to what run off voting really is so I decided to do a bit of research. Here's a summary of my findings:

Initially, I ran across an article from Commondreams. Here's a short excerpt:

"...In instant runoff voting, people vote for their favorite candidate, but also can indicate subsequent choices by ranking their preferences as 1, 2, 3. If a candidate receives a majority of first choices, that candidate wins. If not, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and a second round of counting occurs. In this round, your ballot counts for your top-ranked candidate still in the race. Rounds of counting continue until there is a majority winner..."

I found some additional information at Fairvote.org. They have a good overview of three different types of voting systems that could all be used in a democratic system. The site also includes a fairly clear description of Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)

In this quickie research jaunt I've discovered something else: All the state and local elections utilize different voting systems/methods - nothing appears to be terribly standardized and or regulated. So our country's various levels of government are elected by means that could be solid and reputable or not - there's really no way to know. I don't know why this surprised me but it did. I keep forgetting that this country was built on a collection of states that merely agreed to cooperate to facilitate trade and keeping the people in power in power. The states were pretty much independent entities for quite a long time and I suppose they still retain a great deal of that independence.

That sort of lends itself to the whole "federal vs state government" argument...

And I'm adding whatever I can find on the electoral college (EC).

Here's a site that describes exactly what it is and what goes on but doesn't explain it. So if you want a somewhat technical description with little clarification, read on.

The US Electoral College Webzine has information that defends the EC. I'm also not sure how old this info is...it doesn't look terribly current.

Okay, so the people section of the Howstuffworks website has a good article but I still have questions. I still don't understand exactly how the electors are picked and how they're influenced. The article says that the electors normally cast their votes the way the majority of the population in the state voted but that's it is legal for them to cast their vote differently.

So what confuses me is this: If the electors actually cast the deciding votes for the pres/vice pres then what's going on with the 'people' of the nation voting? If the electors can (legally) vote any way they want to, why is it that they tend to cast their votes the way the other people in the state voted? Who influences the electors? Who appoints them? From what I've read, it just seems that the EC was put into place to put another layer of protection between the people and government. Another layer of deception. We think we're electing the president but it's really the electors that do the electing. Or at least that's how it seems.

I have to do more checking...