All joking aside, I think this is a wonderful testament to IRV voting on two counts. One, it shows how much easy it is to get across how it works by doing it -- and how easy it is to make clear what happened in charts as opposed to words.
The second thing is Doug and Ravi's innovation. Adding "drill holes through your head" (or any colorful way of saying "Prefer a choice not given") is actually a brilliant idea that induces a lot more people to vote -- and allows them to send the extra message that makes it worth it to them.
I think the real revelation here is that Al Gore turns out to be lbo-talk's IRV choice. I think that's a huge surprise to almost all of us. Even those of us who were for him probably thought of themselves as closet moderate minority members, and certainly the vast majority of us who didn't have him as our first choice are probably surprised to find out he's our convergent second choice -- even if you count the people whose first choice is to protest the paucity of choices. In other words, if we measured the candidates on a scale of who we could most live with this, this is our collective verdict. Which, like I said, I think is a huge surprise -- and certainly not one LBO-talk would ever have converged on with other voting methods.
The genius bit of the "drill holes in head" choice is that it gives refuseniks the incentive to rate the field in order to make their ire known.
And in real life, an IRV outcome that had None of the Above first and the best second choice second would make it clear that what was really wanted was more change than was on offer. And no one would be able to spin that as a vote for standing pat.
I hope the IRV community takes note!
Noman