Batch elimination of candidates with zero prospect of winning the election seems entirely reasonable, IFF it streamlines the processing of votes and facilitates prompt completion of the count. The cost to the losers is exact knowledge of how they stacked up against the other losers. This cost has to be weighed against public frustration at delays in calling elections. What I don’t understand is why a decent computer couldn’t do the relevant calculations more or less instantaneously given properly formatted ballot data. The real unavoidable delay comes from mailed ballots arriving after election day. Perhaps only first-round results should be reported until the deadline for receipt of ballots is past and all votes are recorded.