While Asheville voters are deciding this November whether they want to have partisan elections, an exciting election experiment will be taking place in Hendersonville and Cary: instant-runoff voting.

The system is being tested by the state, which will consider applying it more widely.

Hereís how it works: Voters will pick their two favorite candidates for city council. Then, they have the option of choosing third, fourth and fifth favorites.

If two candidates each get 25 percent of the votes, they win. But, if only one of the frontrunners gets 25 percent, or if neither does, the third-preference votes get added in. If they still donít have 25 percent, the fourth- and fifth-preference votes get tallied.

In other versions of instant-runoff voting, candidates who come in below a certain margin are disqualified and their supportersí second-favorite picks are added back in to the tally.

We commend the state for trying such an innovative system.

One benefit of instant-runoff voting is that people can cast a vote for the person they most want to be elected, without worrying that that person might draw votes away from a similar candidate the voter also likes.

Consider the 2000 presidential election. Ralph Nader got 2.7 percent of the popular vote. Assuming that most of his supporters would have preferred Gore over Bush, it is safe to say that their votes would have pushed Gore over the line to win the presidency.

Surely, that would have been preferable to those voters than to have contributed to the victory of President Bush.

Regardless of oneís personal feelings about the candidates, it is clear that in that case, instant-runoff voting would have led to a result that more accurately reflected the will of the voting public.