Well, I have talked to a few people about it, and often the reaction is the one that you just stated, that because of the.... I know there's a lot of mathematics in some of the documents, particularly this one, if any of you have read this one, in which there's a whole section on mathematical derivations.
I think it's a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. As you mentioned earlier, marking an X on the ballot, knowing that if your candidate doesn't win the seat your vote is going to count towards electing a proportional rep, is a very easy thing to understand. Voters can be told, for example, that there's going to be a slight reduction in the superfluous votes that are entered into the proportional pool and so forth, but they don't really have to know that. I think just knowing that their vote is not going to elect this guy and it's going to elect a party that they support...I think that's the important thing, and I don't think they have to know all those details.
So I don't think it's quite as bad as you make it sound. Most of the mathematics that I think you're referring to refer to the calculation of the q factor, which is a very complex thing, but you can keep that as simple as possible; I don't think it's really essential.
That's about all I can say. I think it is a simple system and an easy one to follow. There are complexities in it, but there are complexities in something such as.... Well, talk about complexities: who understands how STV works? Can someone explain this to me in five minutes? I don't think so. You know, there are quotas and everything else.