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Reminds me of a short story by Asimov - Franchise from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_(short_sto
by chadcmulligan 4y ago
Reminds me of a short story by Asimov - Franchise
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_(short_story) (Spoilers!)
In the future, the United States has converted to an "electronic democracy" where the computer Multivac selects a single person to answer a number of questions. Multivac will then use the answers and other data to determine what the results of an election would be, avoiding the need for an actual election to be held.
The story centers around Norman Muller of Bloomington, Indiana, the man chosen as "Voter of the Year" in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Although the law requires him to accept the dubious honour, he is not sure that he wants the responsibility of representing the entire electorate, worrying that the result will be unfavorable and he will be blamed.
However, after "voting", he is very proud that the citizens of the United States had, through him, "exercised once again their free, untrammeled franchise" – a statement that is somewhat ironic as the citizens did not actually get to vote; even he himself did not vote for any candidate, law, or issue.
The idea of a computer predicting whom the electorate would vote for instead of actually holding an election was probably inspired by the UNIVAC I's correct prediction of the result of the U.S. presidential election in 1952.[1]
- origin_path 4y agoIt's an interesting story in light of the way that the population is routinely forced to obey policies justified only via complex statistical models that require a computer to evaluate.