My homebrew club is starting to get more organized regarding dues and officers and such. We're using the Maltose Falcon's bylaws and constitution as a guide in establishing our own. According the constitution we found for them, their offices are filled by the candidate with a plurality of the votes. My concern with using that is if there are 3+ candidate running for the same position, it's likely the winning candidate will have less than a majority.
I think the officers should have the broadest support possible, so I'm proposing two preferential voting alternatives. The first is an instant run-off voting system, where all candidates are ranked in order of preference, and the ballots cast for the lowest-ranked candidate are thrown out and those votes are transferred to the second choice on that ballot. The other thing I thought of was a NASCAR-type points system, where wither 4 candidates, the person ranked 1st would get 4 points, 2nd place gets 3pts, 3rd gets 2pts, and so on. The winner would then be the person with the most points.
Any concerns with either of those systems? Any other suggestions?