The approach I'm taking is to write all the good methods into law and allow the election official in charge (secretary of state, county clerk, etc) to pick from an approved method.
I've been writing something up sorta in the format of California Law which I think is almost ready and I plan to send to my state legislators this week. http://bolson.org/voting/law/ElectionSystemsCode.html Comments on that are welcome, and if we have boilerplate legalese-ish specifications of election methods that might help them be good to go wherever the law needs to be changed. I'm promoting these methods in what I've written up so far: Approval Voting Yes/No Vote (for initiatives, judge retention, etc. Anything single- issue yes or no.) Instant Runoff Normalized Ratings (because it's my baby) Instant Runoff Voting (because IRVists will demand it) Virtual Round Robin Tournament (aka Condorcet. with CSSD) Single Transferrable Vote (with droop quota and meek reweighting. for multi-seat elections) Brian Olson http://bolson.org/ ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info