I just mean that picking an ordering over options is harder than picking a preferred subset of those options
The reverse is true. Picking a subset is hard. For each of the candidates you have to consider whether the less preferred option that you predict has more potential is worth selecting despite the fact that it reduces the chances of your most preferred options. The same difficulty as with picking a single vote for a preferred candidate except multiplied and with much more challenge in second guessing the rest of the voters. Picking rankings completely removes that problem. Then, for any pairing that you don’t have a clear preference ordering for you can put down randomly or arbitrarily and lose nothing.
If you account for the difficulty of picking candidates only, then yes. Practically the difficulty of navigating and filling the ballot should be considered too. People would quickly become angry when confronted with a task to check half of the 870 checkboxes printed on a ballot when choosing among 30 candidates/parties in an election. Even if it weren’t mandatory to decide on all pairs, merely finding all of the 29 pairs your favourite takes part in would be a frustrating task for most citizens.
The reverse is true. Picking a subset is hard. For each of the candidates you have to consider whether the less preferred option that you predict has more potential is worth selecting despite the fact that it reduces the chances of your most preferred options. The same difficulty as with picking a single vote for a preferred candidate except multiplied and with much more challenge in second guessing the rest of the voters. Picking rankings completely removes that problem. Then, for any pairing that you don’t have a clear preference ordering for you can put down randomly or arbitrarily and lose nothing.
If you account for the difficulty of picking candidates only, then yes. Practically the difficulty of navigating and filling the ballot should be considered too. People would quickly become angry when confronted with a task to check half of the 870 checkboxes printed on a ballot when choosing among 30 candidates/parties in an election. Even if it weren’t mandatory to decide on all pairs, merely finding all of the 29 pairs your favourite takes part in would be a frustrating task for most citizens.