BTW: how instant runoff voting works in practice.
The typical number of candidates for a parliamentary seat is a dozen or less. Two major parties, a couple of significant minor parties, some trivial minor parties plus a couple of local independents.
The ballot lists these dozen names, with an open box beside each. You use a pencil to number them in order of preference; 1 for your favourite, 2 for your next-best, etc.
At counting time, they begin by just throwing them into piles according to the first preference. Once that’s done, they remove the smallest pile and redistribute those ballots according to their second preferences. This process just repeats (remove smallest pile, redistribute according to next preference) until one of the piles is big enough to be more than 50% of the electorate.
It really isn’t that complicated.
The whole thing is done by hand. The AEC hires people to do the counting, and the parties send in volunteer scrutineers to watch them do it.
