"Franchise" is a science fiction short story by American writer

Isaac Asimov yi, יצחק אזימאװ , birth_date = , birth_place = Petrovichi, Russian SFSR , spouse = , relatives = , children = 2 , death_date = , death_place = Manhattan, New York City, U.S. , nationality = Russian (1920–1922)Soviet (192 ...

. It first appeared in the August 1955 issue of the magazine '' If: Worlds of Science Fiction'', and was reprinted in the collections ''

Earth Is Room Enough ''Earth Is Room Enough'' is a collection of fifteen short science fiction and fantasy stories and two pieces of comic verse by American writer Isaac Asimov, published in 1957. In his autobiography ''In Joy Still Felt'', Asimov wrote, "I was sti ...

'' (1957) and '' Robot Dreams'' (1986). It is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a fictional

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

called

Multivac Multivac is the name of a fictional supercomputer appearing in over a dozen science fiction stories by American writer Isaac Asimov. Asimov's depiction of Multivac, a mainframe computer accessible by terminal, originally by specialists using machin ...

. It is the first story in which Asimov dealt with computers ''as computers'' and not as immobile robots.

Plot summary

In the future, the United States has converted to an "electronic democracy" where the computer

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 Electorate may refer to: * The people who are eligible to vote in an election, especially their number e.g. the term ''size of (the) electorate'' * The dominion of a Prince-elector in the Holy Roman Empire until 1806 * An electoral district An ...

, 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.

Influence

The use of a single representative individual to stand in for the entire population can help in evaluating the sensitivity of a statistical method. "Franchise" was cited as the inspiration of the term "Asimov data set", where an ensemble of simulated experiments can be replaced by a single representative experiment.

''Franchise (Isaac Asimov Collection)''

"Franchise" was the title story of a 1989 compilation ''Franchise'' illustrated by

David Shannon David Shannon (born October 5, 1959) is an American writer and illustrator of children's books. Shannon grew up in Spokane, Washington. He graduated from the Art Center College of Design and now lives in Los Angeles. In 1998 he won the Caldecott ...

(, ).

References

External links

*
"Franchise"
at the Internet Archive {{Earth is Room Enough Multivac short stories by Isaac Asimov 1955 short stories Works originally published in If (magazine) Fiction set in 2008