Instant Run off Elections

With the political season over and nothing left to do but the swearing in I decided to throw in my two cents. Don't leave too quickly though, I'm not going to talk about anyone. I want to talk about how to improve the electoral system.
Truthfully the American system of voting is mostly fine. I like the electoral college though we don't really use it anymore and that is a problem, but not what I am focusing on.
I'm more interested in ending the two party system. There are always going to be parties but the only thing worse than having two parties is having one.
The problem is that if you vote for anyone besides a Democrat or Republican you are casting a protest vote, because except in small local elections other parties can't hope to win. Which is where Instant Run off Elections come into play.
The basic idea is that instead of simply choosing a single person and voting for them you list the candidates in order of preference. I personally might then put the Libertarian candidate into position 1 and move down from there to the other parties.
Now since it is an instant run off election, when the votes are counted if no one has fifty percent of the vote the computers simply remove the person from the list with the least votes in position 1, it then gives those votes to the person those people listed in position 2, continuing to eliminate the candidate with the lowest vote count until someone has a majority of the votes.
It really sounds more complicated than it is, but what it does is important, allowing people to vote for who they want to rather than the person who has a chance to win.
This isn't a new idea, but it is one which is unlikely to ever see the light of day. Neither one of the two parties has any reason to change the way things are now, so if you're ever going to see republicans and democrats agree its going to be on keeping themselves in power.