Still, range voting demands a more complex opinion of individual voters (cardinal ranking instead of ordinal ranking)

I would argue that cardinal rating is easier for voters than ordinal ranking, since voters don’t actually have strict orderings of candidates in their heads. It’s especially apparent when there are many candidates, and ordering them in a meaningful way is difficult. It’s easier to say how much you like a candidate.

When I vote in ranked elections with many candidates, I end up grouping them into rating categories first and then the rankings are essentially random within each category.

Also arguably, in more complex systems like range voting there is more scope for strategic voting, but that is a whole other discussion.

This is essentially a strawman argument, though:

You wouldn’t say that all ranked systems suffer from “dark horse” pathologies, just because Borda does.

Yet people talk about rated systems as if they all suffer from strategy in the same way as plain Score Voting.

There are many rated voting methods. Score, yes, but also STAR, MJ, 321, IRNR, etc. and each has different trade-offs between different criteria, just like the wide variety of ranked methods.