Thanks to Chris for this defense of IRV, which is more thoughtful than the one I was planning. I might just add that the anomalies of IRV will never be worse than they are in the LP, where NOTA can never be eliminated. I quote from the March 2001 Golden Gate Libertarian report on the state convention:
Chair. The IRV procedure yielded very interesting results in the election of state chair. Jeffrey Sommer was eliminated on the first ballot with 29 votes (despite Linda Grau's having compared him to Mahatma Gandhi and Teddy Roosevelt, among many others, in her seconding speech); Brian Lee Cross got 46 votes, and Aaron Starr 53, short of a majority. Seven of Sommer's supporters listed no one else, so their votes went to NOTA. The rest were evenly split, bringing Cross to 57 and Starr to 63-still not a majority. Since NOTA can never be eliminated from an LP ballot, Cross was crossed off. Starr's victory occasioned some surprise, since the abundance of Cross buttons had made him look like the front-runner.