Voting method

Everyone has exactly one vote. It's literally one single, transferable vote. Yours went to Mary. For others, it ended up with someone else. I think batistuta's point is technically correct though. The effort involved in voting down the line is wasted for most voters. It's hardly that much effort though, and nobody is saying you have to do it. So, it's a bit of a non issue.

It's not about whether they "really want their 13th choice" - it's about whether they want their 13th choice more than their 14th choice. I don't want Clare Daly back as an MEP for Dublin, but I absolutely want to prevent the two ***** from the National Party/Freedom Party getting in at any cost, so I absolutely will vote down to 20+ candidates.

Filling out the ballot in your preferred order is not tactical voting. Tactical voting is changing your preferred order to try and game the system - it's something that's often practically required in a FPTP system, and something that basically never makes sense in PR-STV

Maybe what you want is the Senate system, where everyone's vote can be split. Whatever percentage of your vote that Mary needs to reach the quota goes to her, and then all Mary's votes get transferred on to other people at a reduced value.

To be honest though, the "error" that this corrects is often exaggerated. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

So you give the SF lad a preference, and obviously no preference to the God botherer, yeah?

But whether or not you give the SF lad a preference, it makes no odds to the God botherer, because you're not giving him a preference either way.

I mean yes, I see the logic of endeavouring to push someone into the 4th or 5th seat that from your perspective may be the lesser two evils.

But make no mistake, you ARE voting for SF in that instance, and your personal strategy would have to be replicated across hundreds, if not thousands of voters, to make a material difference.

I'll say it again, only vote for people you are happy to see elected. If that stops at No. 1, so be it.

That's mad.

This is actually the first time that we've had an electoral commission going into a PR-STV elections so hopefully they'll issue something to everyone explaining how these things work (In the same way that the referendum commission has been doing for years)

So you voted for a dickhead, thats what you're saying.

This is my point entirely, why would you give someone who offends you any preference at all? Because with any preference, you ARE voting for them.

How so? What don't you understand?

This has been a thing forever. Some people will never realise its two seperate ballots. Same thing happens with dual referenda on a day - plenty of people assume you have to vote the same for both.

When there was a Leixlip Town Council and elections were held coincident with Kildare County Council it was quite common to see 1,2,3 on one and 4,5,6 on another; almost always for FF for whatever reason. Very rarely was it anything other than single party voting and being in alphabetical order wasn't uncommon either.

I really doubt it was just a Leixlip thing!

Some Returning Officers would take the 4,5,6 ballot papers as showing valid preferences but I believe the standard now is there needs to be a 1 or a (single) X to consider a paper valid.

That story about the comb is brilliant.

The number of seats available can be inverse to how many counts occur. Particularly if its one - I presume you don't go that reductive and only vote 1 in a by-election or presidential election?

The number of candidates has far more impact than the number of seats.

Brian Lenihan was elected on the 11th count in a by-election, so no surplus only came in to play, only eliminations. On that last count, ~1500 votes transferred from FG to Joe Higgins - those will have had to be primarily people voting down the card to vote against Lenihan.

By comparison, Howth-Malahide MD has 7 seats and was settled in 3 counts in 2019, with only second preferences used. This is because only 9 candidates ran; 4 got over a quota and they distributed 3 surpluses before all seats were filled; nobody eliminated until the end.

There hasn't been a two seat election in years, the last I can find is Donegal-Leitrim in 1973, 3 seater with the Ceann Comhairle and very few candidates.