I think the more meta problem is that the people who agree that plurality is bad can't agree on what a better system should be :) IRV actually encourages strat

I think the more meta problem is that the people who agree that plurality is bad can't agree on what a better system should be :) IRV actually encourages strategic voting, see e.g. http://mattbruenig.com/2014/11/15/instant-runoff-voting-and-strategic-voting/ http://mattbruenig.com/2014/11/15/instant-runoff-voting-and-.... For a concrete example, if in the USA we had an IRV election between Trump, Clinton, and Sanders in 2016, there are some (not unrealistic) scenarios where it's possible that your (honest) choice to vote 1. Sanders 2. Clinton 3. Trump would cause a Trump victory, whereas a strategic vote of 1. Clinton 2. Sanders 3. Trump would cause a Clinton victory. You can argue that approval voting also can lead to strategic voting, but at least with approval voting you won't accidentally cause your least favorite candidate to win by voting honestly. You should look at Condorcet methods, which as a group are conceptually similar to IRV but are more effective at capturing the intent of the electorate. For example, the above scenario can't happen with Condorcet methods. (Again the problem there is that there are actually many of them, and you have to agree on which specific one you want. But all are better than IRV). IRV isn't the way forward, and it's unclear to me why organizations like FairVote don't endorse another method. (They have an article about it here but the reasoning doesn't really make sense to me. http://www.fairvote.org/why-the-condorcet-criterion-is-less-important-than-it-seems http://www.fairvote.org/why-the-condorcet-criterion-is-less-...)