Technically speaking, STAR voting is a form of cardinal voting, while ranked-choice encompasses the various ordinal methods. The distinction here is that in ST

Technically speaking, STAR voting is a form of cardinal voting, while ranked-choice encompasses the various ordinal methods. The distinction here is that in STAR voting, I could rank two candidates equally to show that I have no preference between them. Also, I don't have to rank the candidates in order: I could give my first-place a score of 5, my second place a score of 2, and my third place a score of 0. If I scored my second place candidate as 3, this ballot could result in a different outcome.