Interestingly, the electoral college actually should help us here. States decide how they select their electors[1], and so if California says, "OH, we're going to select our electors with IRV, and direct them to vote based on the situation in the electoral college prioritizing candidates based on votes[2]", then that works. If we scrap the electoral college, then any change has to happen at the national level, or you're stuck trying to figure out what to do with a pile of IRV ballots from CA, a pile of range votes from NJ, and the FPTP votes from the rest of the country, and that seems just about intractable.

Actually, with races being close, I also wonder whether CA dividing its electors would get us more attention... The problem is that it favors whoever the majority doesn't like, in the short term.

[1] It must, now, be democratic; this wasn't always the case, though - many states originally had their legislatures choose.

[2] Obviously this language would be tightened up, but hopefully it's understandable.