Indeed. I'd be in favour of people who know Arrow's Theorum designing the voting system; but not because I care about tactical voting.
I rank the voting systems [Anarchy] -> [Dictatorship] -> [First Past the Post] -> [IRV] -> [Approval].
Anarchy is sort-of the base case. Dictatorship is better than anarchy because at least it is large-scale organisation and infrastructure might happen. FPTP is that and the dictatorship can't be truly unpopular (<35% general support). IRV adds in a really stabilising ability for 3rd parties to successfully build support with a slow rolling campaign - makes it really hard for major parties to move away from the centre because people have a powerful signal for what they want. Approval adds in a level of simplicity to IRV.
I like IRV for the same arguable reason you like tactical voting - a good system should really be a bit random in tight situations. 50.1% of the votes isn't really different from 49.9% and voting systems don't need to differentiate. In Australia (IRV) when we had our last really tight election a bloke got elected on a couple of hundred primary votes from the Australian Motoring Enthusiast party. His platform was basically that he liked souped-up fast cars. Nobody had ever heard of him. Dude was an excellent Senator, he read the legislation and thought about things. Big win for Australia, IMO. Better than some political swamp-creature elected on a tiny margin.
I rank the voting systems [Anarchy] -> [Dictatorship] -> [First Past the Post] -> [IRV] -> [Approval].
Anarchy is sort-of the base case. Dictatorship is better than anarchy because at least it is large-scale organisation and infrastructure might happen. FPTP is that and the dictatorship can't be truly unpopular (<35% general support). IRV adds in a really stabilising ability for 3rd parties to successfully build support with a slow rolling campaign - makes it really hard for major parties to move away from the centre because people have a powerful signal for what they want. Approval adds in a level of simplicity to IRV.
I like IRV for the same arguable reason you like tactical voting - a good system should really be a bit random in tight situations. 50.1% of the votes isn't really different from 49.9% and voting systems don't need to differentiate. In Australia (IRV) when we had our last really tight election a bloke got elected on a couple of hundred primary votes from the Australian Motoring Enthusiast party. His platform was basically that he liked souped-up fast cars. Nobody had ever heard of him. Dude was an excellent Senator, he read the legislation and thought about things. Big win for Australia, IMO. Better than some political swamp-creature elected on a tiny margin.
Also; my favourite voting link: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
EDIT I think the order is obvious, but I upgraded my '>' to '->' for tmporter.