It sounds like STAR is equivalent (or at least similar) to the Condorcet-with-score-based tiebreaker that somebody proposed elsewhere (edit to add: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18395358 ) in this thread. I understood that one but not STAR. It needs much better explanation and marketing! Edit: doh, wait, STAR is in fact the exact opposite -- scores first, ranks as a tiebreaker.

I’m reading https://www.equal.vote/starvoting and I still don’t entirely follow. It’s lacking some detail I’d like to understand. For example, it looks like it is not a Condorcet method. That seems bad to me -- if you’re not electing the Condorcet winner, you need a very good explanation why; and I don’t trust an appeal to numerical ratings that each voter will interpret and use in different ways.

Aha, yes, Wikipedia has a clearer explanation and confirms that it is not Condorcet: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting

I do agree that it looks probably better than IRV, but I’m not yet convinced that it’s a really good system and is worth pushing as a good approach for real elections.