> Your comment reminded me of a short story I read a few months ago. I believe the author was
> Isaac Asimov. In this story, which takes place sometime in the future, there is a global
> government, with an elected president...but the election is decided by only one voter...


It's called "Franchise", and it's by Isaac Asimov.
I can't remember whether it was a global government, or just the US of A.

And calling the Voter a voter is misleading, even if that's what everyone in the story does.
The Voter is never asked any question like "Who do you want to be President?"
What happens instead is that the voter has to answer an opinion poll about issues ranging from "Where do you stand on single parenthood?" to "What is your opinion of the price of eggs?". The computer takes the results and uses them to extrapolate the opinions of the rest of the population, and from there to deduce how they would each vote in an election.
The system was originally created as an election result predicter, but somewhere along the line someone decided that since the computer always got the result right, holding the actual election afterwards was a waste of time and money.

Paul