if we must have politicians . . .

I’ve seen several comments, on as many sites, saying that automatic runoff elections (as used in Australia, I believe) would eliminate the problem of spoiler candidates. True, but I prefer approval voting, which is simpler, requiring only one procedural change: stop discarding ballots as ‘spoiled’ for marking too many candidates. (I guess it’s not so simple where voting machines are used; at least some such machines physically prevent multi-voting.) An approval count also gives a single number which meaningfully measures the winner’s mandate.