As the article mentions, IE6 is still used by millions of users. Website designers still try to retrofit at least some of their functionality to work w/ this ancient scourge. You don't hear anybody trying to make sure their website will work with Netscape.

You're describing instant runoff voting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting This is a great way to allow you to vote for third party candidates without "throwing your vote away". If we had used IRV in the 2000 elections Gore would have won by a mile as most of the Greens would have ranked Nader first and Gore second.