I understand the illogical side of it, but the reality side is they do have an impact on the receiver, you can see this by looking at the replies tab of any of those 15 Delegated SP accounts, and see the anger, frustration, and in-comprehension of the WHY.

If the EIP HF included a requirement for a comment, even an automated one attributed to the down voting account, then the logic would be, Okay I can down vote the idiot accounts, so I can now down vote the abusive accounts.

With the delegations removed, and then people being able to down vote those accounts should they continue, their RC's would end up so low that they would only be able to down vote 3 times, the two free down votes, and then the one down vote they have RC's for.

How many of those Bad Actors you mentioned have a lot of other accounts that can down vote in retaliation? I know for a fact that @berniesanders has at minimum 52 other accounts he can send after anyone he so chooses. I am sure he is not the only one with a lot of multiple accounts. I have Multiple accounts, well two any ways.

I have been retaliated by an account not because of a down vote but because of a comment made, and those retaliatory down votes did have an impact on the rewards of some of my few post. I did not resort to down voting in kind to him, and until the down vote system is fixed, (Comment Required in my opinion), the bad actors will only receive down votes from me for blatant plagiarism, that is the only reason I have down voted any account and will continue to be the only reason.

Bid-bots were allowed despite the white paper, laziness was allowed to run rampant, and two months is not going to resolve it. I have already seen several post that are talking about curtailing the down vote of bid botted post, so logic would deem that to begin down the chosen path of the current flag activity is committing steemicide.