Thanks for digging into that study and providing the extra context. You make a great point that Australian elections, even with the informal votes, have a grea

Thanks for digging into that study and providing the extra context. You make a great point that Australian elections, even with the informal votes, have a greater quantity of voter expressions, and also a greater quality of expressions, since the ranking provides more fine-grained data about the voter's wishes (for those voters who can effectively wield that vote). That is the beginning of quite a compelling argument that the Australian electoral system probably, in practice, produces better outcomes than FPTP in the US, even with the additional losses it incurs due to its complexity. I also admit that we don't really have data on how many of those 32% of electorates actually would be affected in practice, for the reasons you mention (which is why I went with the slightly "safe" language of "as many as a third of seats"), since this is an upper bound, but it is a worryingly high upper bound for something we want the public to have confidence in. What I probably disagree with most in your comment is the dismissive or derisive tone you take towards "those that didn't pay attention to detail". On a forum like this, it's probably a relatively popular idea that those who are the most intelligent and well-informed and have the best attention to detail, should have the most say in running the country, but it's actually a dangerously corrosive idea. Instead, we should be using our intelligence to design systems that are resilient to user error, and that have the maximal probability of picking the correct winner, while putting the smallest cognitive burden on the voter, who should be entitled to equal protection and equal representation under the law (even if those ideals are far from being met in multiple aspects of civic life).