Ranking the voting systems: STAR Voting > Approval Voting > Ranked Choice Voting > Plurality ("pick only one") voting.
Ranked Choice Voting is marginally better than plurality voting, but it has problems. The chief defect with Ranked Choice Voting is its non-monotonicity, whereby increasing your support for your genuine favorite can actually hurt their odds of winning. This may be what happened in Alaska [1].
STAR Voting is a slight modification to Score Voting, where you simply score each candidate and are not forced to rank them. You are given the discretion to give multiple candidates the same score if you so choose. STAR is highly expressive and simple to count: just sum the scores.
Approval Voting is appealing because of its simplicity. Both ballots and how they are counted would require only superficial changes versus plurality, such as changing the prompt from "Vote for only one" to "Vote for as many as you like." Approval has a good balance of utility and simplicity.
If we are going to invest time and effort into achieving voting reform, it would be a shame to spend that effort on RCV rather than superior alternatives.
[1] https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/rcv-fools-pa...
Ranked Choice Voting is marginally better than plurality voting, but it has problems. The chief defect with Ranked Choice Voting is its non-monotonicity, whereby increasing your support for your genuine favorite can actually hurt their odds of winning. This may be what happened in Alaska [1].
STAR Voting is a slight modification to Score Voting, where you simply score each candidate and are not forced to rank them. You are given the discretion to give multiple candidates the same score if you so choose. STAR is highly expressive and simple to count: just sum the scores.
Approval Voting is appealing because of its simplicity. Both ballots and how they are counted would require only superficial changes versus plurality, such as changing the prompt from "Vote for only one" to "Vote for as many as you like." Approval has a good balance of utility and simplicity.
If we are going to invest time and effort into achieving voting reform, it would be a shame to spend that effort on RCV rather than superior alternatives.
[1] https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/rcv-fools-pa...