Alternate system:
Everyone get's a "vote of trust" that they can assign to anyone[1]. Anyone who gets a VoT given to them passes it up the chain along with their own personal VoT. Anyone who does not assign a VoT is valued with the total number of VoTs they have accumulated either directly or by however many degrees of proxy. The person with the highest value is considered the 'winner'.
Yes, this could give a minority leader in the VoTing stakes, but a coalition is easy to arrange (by the leader, wanting to get a majority leadership, or by other "parties" wanting to exceed that person's VoT-count) by those who wish to do so assigning their VoT (and thus also their supporting sub-total) to the person who will represent this coalition.
Everyone has the right to understand where their onward-vote ends up and to change their VoT (re-allocate, de-allocate or allocate what had previously been held back) at any time[2].
Alternately, and more conventionally, absolutely every ballot has "Re-Open Nominations", so that spoiled ballots may only be counted as representing the number of people too stupid to use ballot papers, non-votes may only really be taken as showing the amount of apathy, tactical voting for third[4] parties is only the correct option when one considers the third party most worthy of representing you and utter frustration and everyone is capable of explicitly saying "None of this lot float my boat" by going for RON, rather than accidentally help to get an unsuited minority into power (by misplaced action or complete inaction).
[1] I already know a couple of different methods to deal with "cyclic trusts", but am still undecided as to which to use.
[2] Could be cue for a chaotic ever-changing system, but would also reveal the "will of the people". On the other hand, I'm a great big fan of non-populist systems (e.g. House Of Lords, without all this stupid "elected second house" stuff that merely makes it into a clone of the "first house" in all but name, and nearly that at as well anyway!!!) so this would only be half of the electoral system, the other half surely being a different system altogether[3].
[3] Omnes: "Being a different system", and don't call me Shirley!
[4] Or fourth parties, or fifth ones... or indeed second parties, in most circumstances.