> Has anyone come across strong, detailed arguments against it?
There's a simpler way that's much easier for voters to understand: "approval voting." You mark all the candidates you approve of, and the candidate(s) with the most total votes wins.
This feels like voter disenfranchisement to me. For an example, I don't "approve" of any candidates in our current presidential election. I'm simply going to vote for what I think is best, strategically. If I had to say who I "approved of" (and took the words literally) I would vote no-one. I suppose I would end up still voting strategically and ignore the wording, but would all voters?
TBF, first past the post is even worse in this regard (any vote that doesn't support a member of the Democratic-or-Republican Party is effectively entirely ignored), and ranked-choice isn't much better unless it includes a "leave the office empty" option, which also improves approval voting.
That's not so much an argument against approval voting as it is an argument for carefully and clearly wording the ballot. That's true of any voting system.
There's a simpler way that's much easier for voters to understand: "approval voting." You mark all the candidates you approve of, and the candidate(s) with the most total votes wins.