As a voting officer for the last dozen years or so, I find these theoretical discussions interesting. However, like Euclid tacitly asserting a plane, they are all predicated upon an assertion: informed voters.<p>Broadly enfranchising the populous makes sense. They are paying customers. But I see them coming into a polling place with a partisan sample ballot from the party folks outside all the time, (presumably) copying the markings over to their ballot.<p>Thus, as a practical matter, the <i>empirical</i> difference between first-past-the-pole and Borda or RCV may well prove scant.<p>Quite to the contrary: while the ballot in my county is printed in four languages, occasional voters are coming at it for the first time, and undervoting the ballot because the second column eludes them.<p>In conclusion, for all its trivially demonstrated faults, first-past-the-pole has the virtue of bloody-minded simplicity, and that is not inappropriate for the task.