[lhopki01]

Surely in your example STAR Voting would have had the same result?

Hilary (and all other lesser candidates of which there are none) get eliminated leaving Bernie and Trump. Then preferences of Hilary voters for those two are calculated (Preference for a runoff between Bernie and Trump are already determined) so you end up with the exact same result.

[heintje_ghulam]

You're assuming the scores were chosen from e.g. 1,2,3, and people gave their first preference 1, second preference 2, and third preference 3. So yes, if you force everyone to rank the candidates like in Ranked Choice Voting, in this case you get the same outcome as Ranked Choice Voting. STAR doesn't restrict people to strict ranking though.

[lhopki01]

The only situation where what you say is true is if enough of Hilary's supporters give both Bernie and Trump the same preference number. This is reflected in RCV by not putting a second and third choice. Remember that only the first round takes into account scoring. Runoff only uses relative preference which works out the same as RCV.

Also it took me way too long to understand this which makes this seem to me to be a bad system. I've never struggled to understand how a voting system works before and I've used, STV, MMPR, PR, RCV, and FPT.

I honestly think proportional representation in a Parliamentary system is way better than any of these complicated system. It's simple to understand, I vote for who I want, and it doesn't end up with the stupid situation of an Executive who can't command support of a Legislative.