Voting method

This

Was explained to me back in my late teens by a local tallyman but for a good few years after I only voted for who I liked because I thought he surely hadn't a clue and was only trying to influence my vote!

Maybe he was ;)

The UK system is dreadful, just dreadful. It's designed to minimise the power and value of the individual vote, maximise the power of the two dominant parties, and marginalise as much as possible all other parties. Basic democratic considerations aside, it makes for very poor accountability. However badly one of the dominant parties or its leaders perform — however incompetent, delusional or corrupt they are — the worst sanction they face is becoming the official opposition, and government-in-waiting, with a virtual guarantee of being returned to power in due course. In more mature democracies failed political movements can in fact disappear, making room for newer alternatives. This is virtually impossible in the UK.

UKIP and the SNP aren't like and like, but this just highlights the absurdity of the system. A party with a strong local focus and policies of local interest running candidates in fewer than 1/10th of the constituencies gets more than 50 MPs; a party with a UK-wide focus that campaigns on issues of interest and importance to the whole of the UK and stands in almost every consituency gets well over twice as many votes, but just 1 MP.

And this isn't entirely down to candidate numbers. In the same election, UK and the Lib Dems ran similar numbers of candidates (624 vs. 631) but in the resulting Parliament Lib Dem voters were more than 10 times better represented than UKIP voters (3.88 milliion votes per UKIP MP; 302,000 votes per Lib Dem MP). Tory voters were 10 times better represented again (34,200 votes per Tory MP). It's absurd.

It's not about whether you want to see them elected - it's about whether you want to see them elected more than whoever's left. I don't ever want to see (the Irish equivalent of) the Monster Raving Loony party elected, but if it comes down to a choice betweeen them and a literal fascist like Justin Barrett, I'll take the satirical Monsters every time.

As soon as you stop voting down the page, you are saying that every candidate remaining is exactly equal to you.

Order the candidates in your preference 1-12. Vote in that order. That's it.

Tactical voting basically isn't a thing in PR-STV.

You can say they didn't get your vote.

Not true. If it comes to a choice between them, you have decided you have no preference so do not influence that choice but one of them will be elected anyway based on others preferences. Your lack of a vote does not reduce the chance of one of them being elected.

EVIL 1 chops off fingers. EVIL 2 chops off toes. I ain’t making a preference on that

And that's a perfectly acceptable use of PR-STV - if you have no preference on the remaining candidates, you're saying you don't care which one is elected. Just don't complain if the finger-chopping candidate gets in and you then realise you'd much rather lose toes than fingers.

I’d rather give neither a preference. No vote for either of them and there’s more chance they’ll never get elected.

That's not correct. There's exactly the same chance they'll get elected (you can't control who else voted for them). All you've ensured is that if it comes down to one or the other, you removed your ability to choose between them.