See, I guess I'm...more pessimistic about democracy than you are, on the level of national electoral systems for choosing who runs a government. Because, while there are lots of things to say about the way the American system is failing us as citizens right now, it meets all minimal criteria for democracy--there are elections, the amount of fraud involved in them is so minor as to be stochastic noise, various actors balance against each other and have to contest in order to make decisions of governance. Is there a problem with how the exceedingly wealthy and corporate interests play a role in the system of governance? Hell yeah. But, do they rule unilaterially and without contestation (either from popular pressure or from *other* wealthy/corporate entities)? No. Are there different ways of setting up the system that might work better in some cases? Absolutely (I'm partial to the German legislature's method of translating votes into seats, personally). But I just don't believe that there are institutional changes that exist that could make a truly just electoral system on a state level. I'm too much of a Foucauldian, I guess--the central state is never where justice is going to be instantiated in politics.

I actually think that two-round elections are good, though nowhere near as good as IRV, for choosing executives. The problem is when the field is too fractured, which was the case both in France in 2002 and in Egypt in 2012. But would a single round do any better there? The elected candidate would have nearly zero claim to represent the population in a case like that. High fracturing systems do better without an elected executive, but tell that to anybody writing a constitution for the last fifty years...