But the benefit is only a bit, Publius.
The good news is that the US Constitution does not declare for all governmental levels how to hold elections. So we can indeed improve our voting system (where it does not conflict with what the US Constitution does say).
Unfortunately, Ranked Choice Voting is a bit much like applying makeup. Yes, it has its own problems that STAR would resolve. But it is then still winner-taking-all and it falls short therefore of the regular definition of what a democracy really is.
After WW II, Americans called back into service the Founding Fathers and helped establish a 20th century Constitutional version for Germany that included improved voting regulations. Gone is the very large discriminating part of the current US voting system that suppresses so many people. We could easily implement parts of it today.
The German-American system is not as solid democratic as proportional voting, but at least it aims to be a true democracy. The benefits of the German-American system are that it gives voters an actual choice and it does not deliver (too) many parties. Thanks to the Americans, it is truly superior to what we have here at home.
Here is a joke about our system to show that our political choice is not really a choice.
The US Constitution does declare some of the nuts and bolts of how we should vote (for instance, there are two senators per state and that can’t get changed easily at all). It is particularly for the Federal level that we find the details.
States are not told how to hold elections.
The 14th Amendment, however, is declared as demanding that governments cannot put a discriminating system in place when a better system is available.
So, States should but do not have the least-discriminating voting system in place. But, truth be told, the US Constitution does provide them some freedom/leeway. Long story short: when voters in a State want it, they can get it.
Cities and counties are not mentioned in the US Constitutions while they are a separate layer of government. As such, they must follow that 14th Amendment ruling and should have proportional voting in place (there is no better system). They must follow the US Constitution, and the document does not provide them any leeway to do something else. The States, for instance, were not given the US Constitutional freedom to give other governmental levels US Constitutional freedoms.
The good thing about this set up? The local level is also the safest place to learn how the real version of democracy works. We can demand it today, US Constitution in hand.
