I actually did some research on this topic on the gulf between voters' actual preferences and their ordinal votes. Tldr; While the mathematics do prove the imp

I actually did some research on this topic on the gulf between voters' actual preferences and their ordinal votes. Tldr; While the mathematics do prove the impracticality of guaranteeing the socially optimal candidate in ALL situations, realistically in the majority of cases plurality can achieve a candidate with a high social utility even if they aren't the best. In fact in most average situations it can outperform Harmonic or Borda voting procceses because of the lower spread on total scores leading to more deterministic outcomes for close candidates.