Instant runoff refers to using a ranking system on a ballot and then going through the elimination process right away and reallocating voters’ second choice votes to other candidates, rather than having multiple rounds of elections to accomplish the same thing. The opposite of instant runoff, multi-round elections, would mean having several rounds of elections, several rounds of voting and visiting polling stations, and would be very expensive! It’s also unnecessary with modern vote-counting technology that allows us to accomplish the same thing quickly, in one step.