Ok, about what seems like a million years ago, I read a short story in 
high school that I want to saw was called "The Voter" or "The 
Elector".  In it, one citizen was chosen and asked a series of 
questions, and based upon his answers, a new leader was chosen.  

I can not, for the life of me, find the story.  The book readers here 
are a learned bunch - do you think someone can help me?

Thanks!

12 responses total.

Heh. I dont know why but the first short story to pop into my head 
was "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. That isnt what you are looking 
for but it is a good story anyways :)

At this point, I'm thinking I just imagined the whole story.  I 
remember it was in a school book of short stories and 
that "Metamorphosis" (sp?) was one of them....but the voting story 
really stuck with me.

 Hmmm..  I remember that book, and I believe I remember that story,
 but I can't remember who might have written it.

I seem to remember reading such a story in my youth and that it was by a
well-know science fiction author.  Someone who would have been active in
the 1950s.  Someone who liked to extrapolate from current-day trends, in
this case opinion polling.  Heinlein?  Kornbluth?  Simak?  Asimov?

This is why I come to grex......

God I love you guys!

Here you go.  This is from a column titled "Asimov saw it coming:
Picking a voter's brain" by William S. Klein in the April 23, 2004
Christian Science Monitor:

    Back in 1956, Isaac Asimov wrote "Franchise," a story about a
    future in which an electorate of one decides elections. Every
    four years, one voter is picked to be hooked up to a computer
    called "Multivac." After hours of questions and analysis, the
    computer uses the citizen's responses to determine election
    winners.

I spent *days* in the dank, musty library archives tracking that down!
(NOT...)

John, thank you so much.  I truly mean that.  At first it was nice 
just to not know I hadn't imagined it (though if I had, wow - I could 
have written a great story!), and now I can look for it at my library.

Mille grazie!

You're welcome.

I was pretty sure that the author was one of the four I mentioned in my
previous response, so I tried various combination of search terms in
Google involving one of those authors.  Finally, asimov+"one voter" did
the trick.

I remember reading that story in the mid- to late-Seventies, in an SF
magazine.  If it were re-printed in "Analog," I might have it, but "Analog"
didn't do a lot of reprints; that was more the style of "Galaxy" and "Fantasy
and Science Fiction" magazines.

Speaking of 'lost' books, I was recently reminded of one I read in the late
Sixties, _The Cat Who Went to Heaven_.  The only one I can find in Google,
Amazon and the Ann Arbor Library is the one from 1930 or 1931, which is NOT
the one I'm looking for.  This Cat (unlike the one in '30s story) shows up in
the queue at the Pearly Gates, stopping the line-processing because the
screeners don't know how to handle it.  The rest of the book is in three
parts: The Earth-placed story of how the cat got there, the Hell-placed story
of how its denizens can exploit the glitch, and the Heaven-placed story of
how its denizens solve the problems presented by the other to parts, all
inter-leaved.  Anyone here know the author?

There a book published in 1990 with that title, by Elizabeth Coatsworth. 

Coatsworth's book was first published in  1930 or 1931; it's the only one I've
been able to find on the web. :(

The book I was/am looking for is _Magnifi-cat_, by Carolyn and Edmund Sheehan.
'Twas published in 1972, later than I had thought.  It also appears to be
rare, showing up in several rare-book lists.

UofM has a copy in the Grad Library.

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