The single transferable vote allows ranking, but it also allows people to go within the party lists, so their choice is greater there. Closed proportional representation has a limited choice because people vote only for the list. It's a bit like ours: you vote for one candidate, they vote for one list, and the order on the list determines who gets elected according to the support for the parties. In PR systems with open lists, you can go within the lists, and in some systems you can actually go within the lists of other parties, so you have greater choice there. Then in mixed systems you have that similar choice, depending on how the proportional side is organized, but you also have the vote for the single member MP.
I'll just conclude with the point that if you were to assess on the basis of choice, the alternative vote wouldn't give you much of an advantage over where we are right now. I don't use that as a way of saying where we are right now is totally broken, because we are making some interesting forms of progress.
PR with closed lists, also, to my mind, should be rejected. If we are going to change our system, why would we move to a system where you have only one vote for the closed party list?
Thank you very much for your time and attention.