At Tuesday's Vermont House Committee on Appropriation's quick hearing regarding Vermont's instant runoff voting bill, S.108 and changes (see yesterday's post), Vermont Deputy Secretary of State Bill Dalton provided some concise and direct support of IRV.

Among his comments:

IRV "complicates the ballot process a little bit." The SoC's office doesn't expect the runoff provisions of S.108 to be used very often (he used every 10 years as an example time line). Up front costs for S.108 will be around $90,000 with the bulk being used for public education and remainder for designing/printing ballots. The SoC's office is open to making use of volunteers in the public education effort.

Follow up:

Dalton also said a runoff under S.108 would cost around $45,000. Although he did functionally compare an IRV runoff to the Auditor's recount in 2006, Dalton said better planning and systemic changes due to experience is what makes the lower price feasible.

To sum it up? Referring to S.108, Dalton stated "This is doable. It's very cheap, very narrow, very easy to accomplish."