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.
Campaign Economics: Turnout, Refusers, Opposition¶
Chapter: 08 — Implementation: Universal Principles File: 08_045 · v1 · 12 June 2026 (sessions 34–35)
An early-draft layer (note of 01.10.2026 after audit 040m). "An escrow or trust before the referendum", the 30-day payment term and "weighted votes" are the earlier wording: the budget pays under law, the payment arrives at once after the choice, ballots are not weighted. The shares of opponents and turnout are estimates at a small percentage. The exact-answers sheet 1d and the charter 048m are in force.
Note of 02.10.2026. "A dividend of the scale of a month's wages" is one of the hypotheses about the size, not a norm.
45.1. Methodological foundation: zero-price statistics do not apply¶
All historical non-turnout statistics describe a world where non-turnout was free. Habit is a behavioural phenomenon of zero price: it governs choice when nothing is at stake. An AB-EXIT referendum hangs on a one-off action a sum of the order of a month's wages of the lower half of the distribution — and no "habit" of that scale exists: a person who gets up to an alarm 24 times a month for a rate of X/hour comes once for a rate of 200X/hour (at a physical polling station) or 40,000X (two minutes in an app).
Consequence: forecasting an AB-EXIT referendum by the turnouts of ordinary referendums (including the Swiss UBI-2016 with its 46 %) is a category error. UBI-2016 measured turnout for a conversation about money (the sum was not in the law; the authors called the vote "a discussion"); AB-EXIT measures turnout for money (the sum and the formula are in the text of the ballot). The correct reference base is behaviour with personal money at stake: applications for the Alaska PFD (~100 % of those eligible, with an annual application), tax refunds, compensation programmes.
45.2. Two circuits of mobilisation¶
Circuit 1 — greed for money. With a dividend of the scale of a month's wages the benefit/effort ratio breaks through hyperbolic discounting and distrust: the threshold "I'll go just in case" is crossed already at a subjective belief in payment of 5–10 % (the expected value of the hour is still a multiple of the wage rate). Only distrust needs treating — by the formula in the text of the law, the payment deadline (30 days), escrow/trust before the referendum, a live municipal precedent.
Circuit 2 — greed for weight. A unique property: AB-EXIT is the only vote where the expectation of others' turnout raises one's own. Ordinary elections: "they'll decide without me — so be it". Here: the pragmatist sees that the mass he considers incompetent is voluntarily leaving the field — his vote turns from one-in-millions into one-in-half-as-many. This is not fear; it is, for the first time, lawful greed for power; an opponent of the mechanism is obliged to come and vote "against", a supporter — to entrench. The dominant strategy of both informed groups is to come. The referendum mobilises itself.
45.3. Turnout forecast (a jurisdiction of the type "poor region of a developed country", dividend ≈ a month's wages of the lower strata, no quorum, combined with elections)¶
| Layer | Share of electorate | Will come | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pragmatists + ideologues (circuit 2) | ~40 % | 90–95 % | ~37 % |
| Apathetic, dividend = significant money (circuit 1) | ~35 % | 90–95 % | ~33 % |
| Physically unreachable (no documents/connection/address) | ~12 % | 10–15 % | ~1.5 % |
| Waverers | ~13 % | 60–70 % | ~8.5 % |
Turnout: 78–85 %. The 60 % threshold is broken with a margin; the opponent's only point of attack is belief in the payment (see 45.6).
45.4. Refusers of button B: 3–7 %¶
Who will consciously refuse a dividend for what they already do not do: religious abstainers (0.5–1 %), ideological boycotters (0.5–1 %), the paranoid refusal "I'll end up on a list" (1–3 %, melts after the first neighbour's payment), pride "I don't take handouts" (1–2 %, treated by the compensation frame: "the state pays parties for your vote — now it pays you"). Plus 3–5 % unreachability of registration — treated by auto-enrolment (the Alaska PFD model). Acceptance: 93–97 %. Everyone who took it is an agent of the campaign with a transaction in the app; after the first payment the counter-narrative "they won't pay you" dies physically.
45.5. Refusers of button A: 3–6 % (+ conversion)¶
Weight is not an option — it is built into the arithmetic; "to refuse" = not to come. Who among habitual voters will leave on learning that the vote has got heavier: the ritual-social "the club has emptied" (1–2 %), the protest of the sacred core against weighting (2–4 % in the first cycle — and most quickly work out that protest non-turnout under weighted votes strengthens their opponents, and come out of spite), the free-rider "they'll decide correctly without me" (1–3 %, shrinks in polarised elections). Separately: 5–10 % of marginal voters convert to button B — not a loss but a cleansing by the model of §17, additionally raising the weight of those remaining. Both buttons retain ~95 % of their audience; the system self-centres between greed for money and greed for weight (Nash, §13) — it has no group for which it is disadvantageous.
45.6. Opposition: 9–14 % — the filter "which right is taken away?"¶
A referendum opposition must have an answer to the question "what do you lose?". The right to vote — remains (the weight grows). The right not to vote — remains (now paid). The right being taken away does not exist — unique among referendums (usually something is taken: a tax, a status, property). A real "against" is recruited only from losses of the feeding trough or of a worldview:
| Group | Share of electorate |
|---|---|
| Those feeding off the system (apparatuses, political technologists, election media) | 0.5–1 % |
| The ideologised activists of populists (who understand the threat to the movement) | 1–2 % |
| The hard sacred core "the vote is holy" | ~5 % |
| Protest "against" from distrust | 2–4 % |
| The disciplined activists of mobilisation machines | 1–2 % |
| Total | 9–14 % |
Of a turnout of ~80 % this is 12–19 % of votes; "for" — 81–88 %. The only viable "against" campaign is not an argument (there are no speakable ones) but a lie about future removal ("today they pay — tomorrow they'll take away real elections"). The inoculation is a line on the ballot and in every material: "Both rights — to vote and not to vote — are preserved forever; change is possible only by a new referendum." It eats the phantom down to the low single digits.
45.7. Requirements for the campaign's construction (summary)¶
- No quorum — a quorum turns the opponent's weakest strategy (silence) into a winning one; a criterion for choosing the jurisdiction on a par with the signature threshold.
- The sum and the formula in the text of the ballot — belief in the payment decides everything; a politician's promise ≠ a line of law.
- Payment within 30 days + escrow/trust before the vote — compressing the gap "believed — received". (The earlier wording: the payment comes at once after the choice, and the budget pays under law; no escrow before the vote is needed.)
- Combination with big elections — takes away the opponent's "inconvenient Sunday".
- A frame for chronic non-voters: "Come once — so as never to come again. And get paid for it."
- A live precedent (at least one municipality with a real payment) is worth more than any increase of the sum.
- Count the budget by region, not by country. "1–2 % of the budget" is an average; in a poor region with high exit the share is higher: Saxony-Anhalt at K = 1 % and ~53 % exit — ~€550 million ≈ 4 % of the Land budget, at K = 3 % — ~13 % (055c §6). Show this line next to any K, otherwise "any K for the result" reads as free.
Related: §13 (Nash, Shapley) · §14 (Alaska PFD as reference base) · §17 (segmentation) · §042 (poison pill) · 08_046 (detonators) · 08_047 (zugzwang) · 06_037 (garnishment — mandatory before the pilot)