I am on the board of directors of the Equal Vote Coalition, the primary umbrella organization supporting (among other reforms) STAR voting. So I believe I know why STAR is being popularized. And it is indeed because we believe it is better than score voting. That “we” includes me; with a PhD in statistics, ex-board-member of the Center for Election Science, co-organizer of the British Columbia Symposium on Proportional Representation, inventor of the EPH voting method used by the Hugo awards, consultant on voting methods to the Webby awards, co-author with Bruce Schneier of a peer-reviewed paper on voting methods, and having carried out further research (both monte-carlo and mechanical-turk-based) on voting method quality.

You are free to disagree about whether STAR is better than score. But please do not misrepresent the facts of why it is being promoted. We, its promoters, have evidence that it has much better resistance to voting strategy than score voting and I think it’s clear that it would thereby lead to better outcomes in practice.