[EM] The Demise of the Compromise Candidate:

[Tom Ruen]

Sorry, I'm complete being unrealistic time-wise, 100 candidates will still
take a long while to count, but approval will always be quicker since it
gives more information about voter preference per round.

I still think a 100 candidate runoff election could be done in a good day
with approval. No chance with single votes!

Tom

****
Okay Don,

Try this, You're in a room of 1000 people with 100 well known popular
candidates and you want to elect one. Do you still want to force people to
only vote for one? I'll give this election 30 minutes instead of 15 minutes.
Can you do this with exhaustive single-vote balloting? (If you get two
election round done in 30 minutes I'll be impressed.)

My approach to all large choice elections that need quick results would be:
1. Use approval voting. (voters vote for as many or few as they like)
2. Eliminate half (or half rounded down) candidates each round with lowest
approval.
3. Stop when one candidate is alone above 50% approval.

This can be done in Log2(N) rounds, 7 rounds in this case of 100 candidates.

Approval voting can be done without ballots - simple hand raising - no need
to check that everyone votes only once.

There are no spoilers because each candidate gets a vote independent of all
others. A single winner is guaranteed at the end.

Tom Ruen