NC's crazy instant runoff election-Thigpen was ahead by 100,000 loses by 6,700

Incumbent Judge Cressie Thigpen had a 100,000 vote lead in the statewide IRV contest for NC Court of Appeals. He's lost that lead thanks to IRV votes and now is 6,700 votes behind. Although this was non partisan contest, voter education fell to the political parties mostly, because IRV was touted as a cost saving measure.

Monday Dec 6 2010 McCullough overtakes Thigpen in NC court race
AP News. RALEIGH, N.C. -- Nearly complete results from the instant runoff race for the North Carolina Court of Appeals show the second-place candidate overtaking the leading candidate from the first round of voting.

State elections director Gary Bartlett said Doug McCullough had a roughly 6,700-vote lead over incumbent Cressie Thigpen with counting complete in 99 of the 100 counties. The only one left - Warren County - didn't have enough votes cast to turn the race back to Thigpen.
If the race stays close, Thigpen would have until Thursday to ask for a recount.

Voters initially ranked up to three candidates among 13 who ran on Election Day. Thigpen was the top recipient of first-place votes - 100,000 more than McCullough. But McCullough caught up with second- and third-place votes.

DEMS did a poor job on voter ed, GOP did much better job. DEMS were told to bullet vote, to rank Thigpen 1st and 3rd, and other crazy stuff. Some voters mistakenly ranked 2 or more candidates in the first column. State funded voter ed was meager SBE flier to households. (Since IRV is easy as 1-2-3).

The winner will serve an 8 year term. The tallying method was error prone and risky. We have no way to know if vote tallies were accurate.

The irony is that IRV was pushed by Democrats and thanks to their reform, the democrat lost. The North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting can now say - be careful what you ask for and "We told you so".