Range voting has a Nash equilibrium at the Condorcet winner. By definition, this requires perfect knowledge and strategy for all voters, an unrealistic expectation. Furthermore, if a Condorcet winner exists and is not selected by range voting, some voters have not maximized their strategy and/or information gathering (i.e. some voters are at a systemic disadvantage that has nothing to do with their preferences).

Condorcet methods, on the other hand, select the Condorcet winner by definition for naive elections and Nash equilibriums. It would then stand to reason that these methods are less likely to focus on how voters maximize their vote and more on who the candidates are.

Ah yes! Here are some fun pictures of what you’re talking about.
http://scorevoting.net/IEVS/Pictures.html

It can help to think of voters as positions on a map, and candidates as potential sites of some great new recreation center that everyone wants to have as close as possible to his home.

What voting method can voters use that will yield the location which is statistically closest to the centroid of the voter distribution?

Bayesian regret calculations say score voting.

Oh that also works if you move into n-dimensional issue space, instead of just 2d.

I got tired of reading at that point. I know it’s not intended as proof by verbosity, but the lack of brevity makes the core arguments inaccessible. I really am open to the idea that range voting could be a better system than my current Condorcet preference. I just don’t see it at the moment.

That’s why I like score DSV – basically, score voting renormalized to the smith set.

Could you provide an example of this? I’m curious to see it in action.

Obviously, both reforms are a gigantic improvement over plurality.

That’s the key right there. So long as we have some kind of electoral reform that improves representation, I don’t quite care what it is. It’s likely that STV has the largest body of support in Vancouver due to its familiarity. There are problems with STV, but there are problems with any voting system. The question should probably be “what can we plausibly transition to given the current situation?” It’s a highly contextual question.

(My personal favorite method is a score-condorcet hybrid which I call Score DSV).

Obviously, both reforms are a gigantic improvement over plurality.

Now, I don’t know if your an IRV fan but in case anyone reading is:

Interestingly, tactical IRV and tactical plurality have the same performance as well; but IRV has a higer potential than plurality as you allow for more sincere voters.

So if you’re down on score because it’s tactically identical to approval, you should be MORE down on IRV, because it’s tactically identical to plurality, and plurality is much worse than approval.

To answer your next question, which is “But IRV voters will be more likely to be sincere!” I would say that 1.) that’s not a question 2.) there’s no evidence to support that and 3.) even if it’s true, Bayesian regret simulations show approval out-performing IRV even with a 50% honesty handicap (http://rangevoting.org/StratHonMix.html); so even on the off-chance you’re “right” about the enhanced sincerity, you’re still wrong about IRV.