Political Memes

Hmm, so I did a little research on STAR. It seems to basically just be "weighted" voting, where candidates are given a vote with a weight per voter just to select two runoff candidates. Then it goes to normal FPTP (decided by individual voter ranking) once the runoff candidates are selected.
I really do like the flexibility of the ranking system, and I think it could work very well in an actively participating citizenry. BUT:
I feel like this would just end up with American voters falling into the same 2-party trap, and 3rd parties once again splintering themselves across a bunch of different candidates that will not total up enough to make it into the runoff. Since there isn't multiple chances to coalesce 3rd party candidates into the "most preferred" one, voters will most likely just once again pile into two big parties.
The major benefit I do see is that voters can give multiple candidates the same high rating, meaning the visibility of said 3rd party candidates could be a lot higher and end up eliminating the entire first problem I just mentioned. However, it would be entirely dependent on at least one 3rd party candidate scraping together enough 4 and 5 star votes to make it at least to 2nd place in the runoff before being killed off.
It is also harder to administer and requires a good bit more backend data handling on election workers' side. That's probably not a big deal, but it does add complexity and a little more effort for the public to interpret the final results.

One of the reasons I like RCV is because it sort of "filters upwards" thru candidates, giving each one multiple chances to increase their vote share.
Theoretical: If you had 5 candidates in a smaller local election, and the 1st choice results were 35%, 25%, 20%, 10%, 10%; you probably expect typical Americans used to FPTP to pile Republicans and Democrats into the upper 35 and 25%'s, and through each elimination round their first-choice votes will not change.
But if the 3rd party 20/10/10's, now empowered to not accidentally throw away their vote in FPTP, coalesced into a single voting bloc through their second and third choices not choosing the R or D, they'll easily hit 50%. In STAR, the election is already over; it's a runoff between the R and D again, and now we still have the same 2 party problem.

I'm trying to be realistic though, and as an Oregon resident I want to get at least something that is better than FPTP. There were a couple STAR proposals around the state at county/city levels and they've failed each time, but RCV seems to be getting some momentum this year. At least enough momentum to actually make it to a statewide ballot measure, which is more than any other alternative has gotten so far, so I'm gonna fight like hell for it.