It’s a pity that the country decided not to adopt PR for elections, the principle is good.  It would avoid extreme right- or left-wing governments, which would be healthy.

Under the single transferable vote system, if you vote for a party that comes last, then your vote gets transferred to your second choice and so on.  So in effect the least unpopular party wins.

The good news is that we can apply these principles ourselves anyway.

If our favourite party has little chance where we vote (perhaps came third or fourth last time) then we can simply vote for our second choice instead.  We transfer our vote to our second choice, and so we make it count.

Some have called this tactical voting, but really it’s the same thing.

Let’s give it a go!