1. An automated method of using decoded speech inputs to determine an electronic competitive challenge winner, comprising: presenting a prompt using a first computing system; listening for multiple, simultaneous speech utterances from a plurality of competitive challenge participants on at least one channel with a speech recognition module running on the first computing system or a second computing system in communication with the first computing system; decoding the speech utterances using the speech recognition module to create one or more decoded speech utterances and automatically associating each of the decoded speech utterances with one of the plurality of contest participants; determining a priority or a relative time of utterance for each of the one or more decoded speech utterances; based on a predefined rule set, content of the one or more decoded speech utterances, and the priority or the relative time of utterance for each of the one or more decoded speech utterances, identifying one of the plurality of participants as the winner; and informing the plurality of participants of the winner using the first computing system.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the group of participants is distributed amongst different physical locations.