The advantage that RCV -- at least exhaustive RCV -- has over other systems is that by forcing a ranking, you prevent a collapse back to FPTP.
In approval voting, score voting, range voting etc, parties can and will push their voters to effectively "just vote 1".
This isn't a hypothetical -- it happened in Queensland, Australia when they switched from exhaustive preferential to optional preferential voting (you could rank any number of candidates, rather than having to rank all candidates). The Labor party campaigned on "Just Vote 1" and destroyed the Liberal-National Coalition at that election. Those parties in Queensland then had to merge to offset the effect on their primary votes. In turn that caused the separate Liberal and National party caucuses in the Federal parliament to merge into a single caucus (otherwise there'd be three party rooms). That in turn greatly strengthened the power of hard-right Liberals in the selection of Prime Minister. It's been fairly fucked ever since.
There are better voting systems on paper, but typically those theories don't account for political parties actively misleading voters about how the voting system works.
In approval voting, score voting, range voting etc, parties can and will push their voters to effectively "just vote 1".
This isn't a hypothetical -- it happened in Queensland, Australia when they switched from exhaustive preferential to optional preferential voting (you could rank any number of candidates, rather than having to rank all candidates). The Labor party campaigned on "Just Vote 1" and destroyed the Liberal-National Coalition at that election. Those parties in Queensland then had to merge to offset the effect on their primary votes. In turn that caused the separate Liberal and National party caucuses in the Federal parliament to merge into a single caucus (otherwise there'd be three party rooms). That in turn greatly strengthened the power of hard-right Liberals in the selection of Prime Minister. It's been fairly fucked ever since.
There are better voting systems on paper, but typically those theories don't account for political parties actively misleading voters about how the voting system works.