There aren't that many different electoral systems that work when you have a single post to fill. There's an ongoing interest in Canada in the multi-member proportional representation system, but obviously, as its name suggests, it involves multiple candidates operating under a party label. Proportional representation assumes more than one office to be filled.
Really, I think the options we have here are actually the exhaustive ballot in some form or another, or some form of preferential ballot.
You can do somewhat different things with regard to preferential ballot. The particular form of preferential I favour is one that, if there are 10 candidates running, lets you mark down candidate one, candidate two, candidate three, and then leave the rest of the ballot blank. If you just don't know, that should be fine. That's the system that is used in elections in Tasmania, for example.
In Australian federal elections, which also have preferential ballots, they have the requirement that you list all the candidates. You must list every single one, and if you don't, your ballot is spoiled. I don't think that's legitimate. I should be careful what I say here. I love the Australians. I used to live there, and I respect their system. But I don't think it's as good a system as the one that has been employed in some Australian states and territories, which allows for you to say you feel confident in your knowledge up to a certain point, and after that you don't have views that, in your view, are greater than the wisdom of the whole of the electorate, so you prefer just to indicate one, two, and three, or even just one.