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Robert,

All good ideas, but you don't have the mechanism quite right regarding IRV. The points-based ranking system you describe is known as the Borda Count. IRV is a rank ordered system that successively eliminates the candidate with the fewest first choice votes and transfers votes from voters who chose the eliminated candidate to their next choices. Unfortunately, like plurality voting (the limit of one choice in an election), all rank-ordered systems are actually unequal and provably "unfair". The best bet is simply to have all the voters rate all the candidates (say 0-5 stars), and then either take the highest average scoring candidate as the winner, or perform a rated instant runoff between the two highest-rated candidates using the scores to determine preference ordering. If you're curious about the theory and operation of voting systems (particularly the specific notion of equality in the vote), check out http://equalvote.co .

Cheers,

Mark