Some of these are real logistical issues but are certainly solvable. There's no real reason that we have to know the results immediately other than a desire to know. And a couple examples like ex 4 in your third link are really unlikely to happen because to make them work you have to have a lot of information about the ranked choices of other voters.
* 8 people vote: A, C, B
* 5 people vote: B, C, A
* 4 people vote: C, B, A
IRV eliminates C and elects B, but the majority of voters prefer C over B (12 to 5). The order of elimination dropped 8 ballots' information that they prefer C over B. To put that generally, IRV ignores the secondary preferences of large demographics.
Perhaps another example of why I think single winner voting systems should take all preferences into account (as Condorcet methods do):
* 100 people vote CentristX
* 101 people vote PolarizedCandidateA > CentristX
* 101 people vote PolarizedCandidateB > CentristX
* 101 people vote PolarizedCandidateC > CentristX
* 101 people vote PolarizedCandidateD > CentristX
The example is a bit contrived, but it highlights how disregarding secondary preferences (IRV's main feature) isn't a good idea. 403 people prefer CentristX over every other polarized candidate, yet CentristX is dropped in IRV's first round.
Disclaimer: I run modernballots, a voting website that makes use of the Schulze-family of voting systems: https://modernballots.com/elections/zombies/vote/
* people's sincere preferences
* people's reported preferences in surveys
* people's strategic voting in a hypothetical scenario
* and people's strategic voting in the real world.
I'd argue that an ideal system allows those four to collapse into one, but I'm not holding my breath.
In honesty though, I don't know. I'd assume this type of failure would occur whenever the largest demographic's second choice isn't the first choice of the second largest demographic (read: quite often), but that's armchair guessing.
I'm much more convinced about the argument against complexity, because I don't trust the state government much to design something clear and simple, and it's not yet clear to me that ranked choice is "simple".
I hope they do.
In any case I'm very excited to see what happens.
This also has (compared to both Condorcet methods and base IRV) relative simplicity of tallying ballots and processing them to get a result.
[0] http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Bucklin_voting
[1] http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Majority_Choice_Approval
Bucklin and most MCA variants are also summable (mostly k=1, some k=2), while IRV is not summable [0]; this is an important trait for verifiable large elections which Wikipedia'so table omits.
If you really want simplicity though, I suppose you could use IRV as your tie breaker amongst the Schwartz set.
Which isn't to say it isn't a good system; but its definitely a draw back. Supporting IRV seems like a good first step in which we don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Yes, graph theory comes into play for tie breaking (assuming we can agree that cyclic Condorcet paradoxes are ties of sorts), but the core of the idea is already understood by an overwhelming majority in concept if not by name.
Of course, if you assume consistent relative performance, then any single winner tournament that you construct among the candidates in a Condorcet election would choose the Condorcet winner of one exists, and some member of the Smith set in any case (though different initial bracket structure can choose different Smith set members in the absence of a Condorcet winner.)
A method which is summable for k=1 is good for this, one which is summable for some k>1 is less good, and a nonsummable method (like IRV) is, to me, unacceptable. [0]
If you want to be informed on a topic, at least read the abstracts of my links.