Instant Runoff Voting - NYTimes.com Re "Keep the Clunkers Away From the Polls" (editorial, May 28), about a proposal to use old manual voting machines rather than newer electronic ones because of potential problems if there is a runoff: When the optical scan voting machines were purchased three years ago, the New York City Board of Elections was advised by several good-government organizations to buy software to enable instant runoff voting, in which voters rank their preferred candidates, and that information is used to determine the winner if no candidate gets a majority. The taxpayer money spent on warehousing the old voting machines and paying for technicians to keep the "clunkers" functioning should have been used to purchase that software for use in the Sept. 10 primaries. This does not excuse the State Legislature for missing the opportunity to permanently change the primary date to June.