The rule, exactly. Before an election each citizen chooses: to vote — or to take a payment and not vote in that election. The payment is a percentage of the median income, set by referendum; there is no fixed sum. One ballot is one vote, with no multiplier in the count; the vote is amplified only in that each ballot's share grows as others step out. The budget pays under law; a candidate never pays. Only a referendum of all citizens — simple majority, no quorum — introduces, changes or repeals the rule.
The protocol has been introduced nowhere and no pilot has been run: shares, turnout and outcome figures in the chapters are estimates, and the protocol promises nobody an election victory. If a chapter says otherwise, Exact Answers and the Charter are correct. For a candidate: ten questions and ten steps. For a citizen, a mayor, a finance officer, a donor, a journalist, a scholar, a lawyer: answers by role. Everything in force in one file: llms-full.txt.
40ao. Dick Morris: Triangulation and Vote.com — Five Arguments: the Centre Is Already Taken, Democracy by Click, the New Prince, the Payment as an Entitlement, Consultants Will Game It¶
Chapter: 06 — The Structural Hypocrisy of Criticism and the Arsenal of the Elites File: 06_040ao · v1 · 16 October 2026 Source: the architect's assignment of 15 October 2026 (the fourth of the public US technologists: "Dick Morris, go"). Morris has not written about the protocol; a reconstruction from the triangulation of 1995–96, Behind the Oval Office (1997), The New Prince (1999), Vote.com (1999), the books with Eileen McGann and the Newsmax broadcasts. Two moves by the architect — §1 (who sits in "the centre") and §2 (the lag between sowing and harvest).
How to read. Morris is the only technologist who himself proposed changing not the campaign but the system: Vote.com promised direct democracy by click. So two of his theses are ours without the mechanism (the centre wins, the representative is obsolete), and the chapter is mostly about which centre and which lag.
0. Morris's craft¶
Triangulation: the candidate's move away from both parties to the centre, Clinton 1995–96, "the era of big government is over", welfare reform, the victory of 1996. Government by polls to the point of caricature: he polled where the president should go on holiday. The New Prince — Machiavelli for the age of daily polling: the leader must do what sixty per cent want. Vote.com — the internet will make the plebiscite daily, representatives will become obsolete. In 2012 he predicted a Romney landslide from the polls; in 2022, The Return, on Trump's comeback. The most prolific of the technologists and the most candid: the voter is a consumer, give him what he wants.
1. Triangulation already does what you want — and who sits in "the centre": the architect's move¶
Argument. A clever leader moves to the centre and takes the median voter without any payment; Clinton did it by polls in 1996.
The assistant's answer. Triangulation moves the candidate, not the electorate: it chases the median of the hall as it is, apathetic included — the poll of short horizons (059j §2). The protocol moves the median itself: it removes the apathetic from the count, and the centre to which power turns (040ag item 5) is no longer a consultant's trick but a property of the construction. And triangulation was rented, like Rove's turnout (040al item 2): 1996 won, 2000 lost.
The architect's move. "Here I paused again: inside this concept I see two completely different voters, mixed before the protocol. Who are they in the centre — the apathetic, the meek, the not-yet-burned, or simply reasonable people without extremes?" In the technologists' "centre" are mixed people who share only one thing: their vote cannot be predicted by party. There are four states there, divided by two marks — whether a person has a position, and whether he moves.
| State | Position | Moves? | Why he is "in the centre" for a poll | Under the protocol |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "the apathetic"-waverer | none | yes, by mood | Converse (1964) called it "non-attitudes": he answers political questions at random, and the sum comes out "moderate"; a centrist by absence of position | takes B |
| "the meek" | has one, but hides it | yes, towards the stronger | avoids conflict, answers "like everyone", votes for the likely winner or out of fear; a centrist by caution | takes B: money is the first offer without fear |
| the cross-pressured (040ac item 4) | has one, mixed | no, decides by issue | conservative on one thing, liberal on another; the real centre by position; Dalton's apartisan (040aj) who still votes — "not yet burned" | stays, weight ×2 |
| "the burned" | has one | no | does not appear in the poll at all — he is in the "did not come" line (1f §6b), though by position most often the centre, the abandoned middle (040aj) | returns with a share |
Three conclusions. The centre of triangulation is the first two. Morris goes not to position but to motion: he needs those who can be moved cheaply and who will come — the apathetic without a position and the meek with a hidden one. So "the centre" in polls is not a point on the axis but a mood; it was measured by asking where the president should go on holiday. The third he does not touch — few and expensive (1f §6b); the fourth he does not see. "A clever leader takes the median voter" means "takes the average mood of those who have no position". The two halves of the centre are opposites: some move and have no position, others have a position and do not move; before the protocol they sit in one column, "waverers", and the technologist serves the first while booking the result to "the centre". The protocol separates them with one number: the movers take B, the standing get weight. The polled centre disappears; what remains is the centre by position — the cross-pressured and the returning burned, "reasonable people without extremes". That centre has no mood, it cannot be taken by triangulation, only by argument, and triangulation turns into programmes against the number (040v item 1). Morris is right that the centre decides and wrong about which: for thirty years he served those who will leave under the protocol, and called it the median voter.
Residual. None.
2. Vote.com: democracy by click — and the lag between sowing and harvest: the architect's move¶
Argument. The internet gives direct democracy every day; representatives are obsolete; the protocol is a half-measure: why pay for abstention when you can ask everyone daily?
The assistant's answer. A daily plebiscite of everyone is the apathetic's rule by click, the shortest horizon raised to a rule. The protocol is the opposite: the referendum is last and on a simple question (040ae), and participation gets a price so that those who want to decide decide. His own practice refutes him: polling the hall on where the president should holiday yields the hall's taste.
The architect's move. "Complex projects need time and a lag between action and consequence. The short horizon of a daily referendum will give short decisions. In nature, between sowing and harvest it does not much matter what you decided. Sometimes you just have to wait." Between sowing and harvest the decision is already taken, and a daily poll in the field changes nothing but the sower's nerves. A road, a reform, a factory live longer than one cycle, and their consequences come with a lag; a government judged every day takes only daily decisions — "the three-day rule" (059i §3), only legalised. The cycle of two to four years is the lag between action and consequence, and the protocol does not touch it: the cycle stays the jurisdiction's (048m art. 8); only who judges on harvest day changes. This is also the key to "the thermostat with memory" (040aj item 4): a thermostat must fire no more often than the result ripens, or it reacts to the weather rather than the climate. Vote.com proposed a thermostat clicking every minute — the "thermostat speed" residual (040v §6) with the opposite sign: not too slow but too fast.
Residual. None.
3. The New Prince: the leader must follow the people, and your burned are a minority¶
Argument. A leader who follows the thinking minority loses sixty per cent.
Answer. The new prince follows those who are counted. The protocol changes who is counted: after it, sixty per cent of those who vote are the burned and the band around the median (040al §4), and Morris's rule works for us without a single amendment. The difference is memory: a poll does not remember, the thermostat does (040aj item 4).
Residual. None.
4. The voter is a consumer: the payment is the biggest entitlement in history, and the government will appropriate it¶
Argument. "It was I who gave you D" — the incumbent will make the payment its own and win on it.
Answer. D is given by the charter, not by the government (048m art. 4); its size is pegged to the median and changes only by referendum (art. 14); nobody gains office from the payment — unlike the Athenian misthos and the Roman grain (013g §4b). It is an entitlement that shrinks the others: the hall that demanded benefits took B and stopped voting for them, and state funding of parties goes under the knife first (040y). One can appropriate what one can raise; D cannot be raised.
Residual. None.
5. Any rule will be gamed by consultants like me¶
Argument. We will poll the band around the median and sell it "stay" or "take", depending on who pays.
Answer. By all means. Selling "stay, because it is worth it" is the new genre of campaigning (040v item 1). "Take" cannot be sold to a target: the choice is secret, the takers unknown (048m art. 9.3). The consultants' market moves from bringing-in to persuasion — the change of product (059g §4), and Morris as a seller of "stay" is welcome.
Residual. None.
6. What Morris gives the protocol¶
Two of his theses are ours, without the mechanism: the centre wins (triangulation) and the representative is obsolete (Vote.com). The protocol delivers the first structurally — a centre by position instead of a centre by mood (§1) — and the second without a daily plebiscite: the representative stays, but his checker is different and judges on harvest day (§2). And his miss of 2012 — a Romney landslide by the polls: even the master of polling errs when the hall judges by the face (059i).
Summary¶
| Morris's argument | What is true | Answer | What remains |
|---|---|---|---|
| the centre is already taken by triangulation | yes, the centre decides | four states in "the centre"; triangulation takes the movers without position, the protocol keeps the standing with position (the architect's move) | — |
| democracy by click | yes, the representative is weak | a daily poll is the apathetic's rule; between sowing and harvest one must wait: the cycle is the lag, the protocol changes the judge, not the lag (the architect's move) | — |
| the new prince follows the people | yes | those who are counted; the protocol changes who is counted | — |
| the payment is an entitlement, the government appropriates it | a possible attempt | D is given by the charter and cannot be raised; an entitlement that shrinks the others | — |
| consultants will game it | yes, they will try | "stay" is the new genre; "take" cannot be sold to a target | — |
Weak point¶
Morris writes a great deal but not about the price of the vote; a reconstruction from triangulation, The New Prince and Vote.com; his 2025–26 positions are on Newsmax, not in texts, and were not checked. The table of §1 maps the repository's states onto polling categories, it is not a measurement: the share of each of the four among "waverers" has been counted by nobody, one more question for the pilot (048l) beside Dalton's instrument (040aj §6).
Related: 040al §4 · 040an · 040aj · 040ac item 4 · 040ag item 5 · 040ae · 040v §6 · 013g §4b · 059i §3 · 1f §2, §6b · 1h · 048m arts. 4, 8, 9.3, 14