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.
Zugzwang: the Rocket One Cannot Stay On¶
Chapter: 08 — Implementation: Universal Principles File: 08_047 · v1 · 12 June 2026 (sessions 34–35)
How to read this chapter (note of 02.10.2026). The text contains wording that is easy to misread: sums and formulas with coefficients are worked examples: the size of the payment is set as a percentage of the median income approved by referendum; "72 hours" is a hypothesis about the first days, not a rule. The exact-answers sheet 1d and the charter 048m are in force.
47.0. The catalogue of forks¶
Added 20 September 2026. All propositions of this kind — about fifty across the repo, including five forks around the vote count, the lists and the sign on the ballot — are gathered in one place at the start of the book, together with an explanation of why they are described and the chess logic of the fork, zugzwang and the pin: 001c ("A Board without Good Moves"). Sections 47.1–47.5 below are the first five rows of that catalogue in expanded form.
47.1. The discovery: the mechanism burns the mobilisation base of whoever adopts it¶
AB-EXIT is a take-off rocket with no possibility of holding on. A politician raises the topic → name recognition ×3–5, ~73 % support for the proposal in the constituency (calculation 47.4) → pushes it to a referendum → 80 %+ "for" → and the next election runs by the new rules: the apathetic whom he brought with the promise of a dividend took the dividend and left — they are no longer his voters (the state paid, not he). Remaining are pragmatists and ideologues with double weight — an audience that knows no populist gratitude: it votes for competence, not for "thank you". The adopter builds a filter — and it is not certain he passes his own filter.
47.2. The zugzwang of all: everyone must move, not everyone can get out¶
As soon as the first has raised the topic and got his percentages, every politician is obliged to take a position: silence loses (everyone has the topic), "against" is unspeakable (46.4), "for" remains — but "for" means a system in which his own skills depreciate (mobilising the apathetic, emotional campaigns, microtargeting the aggrieved). All are obliged to enter; those get out who can win on a cleared field — technocrats, managers, the honest (§15, PNAS). Chess zugzwang in the exact sense: any move worsens the position; everyone is obliged to move.
Consequence-prediction: the first bearer will almost certainly be a politician who will not win under the mechanism — and this is not a defect of the scenario but its engine. Three types for whom personal loss after the mechanism's victory is an acceptable price: (1) the departing — last term; AB-EXIT gives a name in history instead of quietly seeing out the term; (2) the battering ram with a second career — the businessman-politician: pushed it through, entered the textbooks, returned a legend; (3) the technocrat-heir — the rare case of a pilot able to land the rocket: the cleared electorate is his native audience. The project's strategy looks for a pair: a detonator (types 1–2) + an heir (type 3).
47.3. What the first one gets (the economics of the underdog's move)¶
A change of category: "the candidate who will lose" → "the man who offered money". Authorship of the first move is inalienable (Brexit is glued to Farage, not to Cameron, who called the referendum) — every subsequent politician who pronounces the sum works on the first one's monument. Measurable: name recognition ×3–5/month; ownership of the topic in any debate about money and elections for a decade; if intercepted by a heavyweight — a party loss, a historical win. Plus the correction against "had no possibility of winning": see 47.4 — with a starting base the possibility appears.
47.4. The base threshold: 1 % versus 10 %¶
Constituency measurement (tactic: a sitting politician proposes the referendum to voters as a popularity test, regardless of legal passability): support for the proposal 68–78 % (centre ~73 %) — non-voters 90 %+, own loyalists 70–85 %, others' voters 50–65 % for the idea / 15–25 % transfer to the author; active opponents 8–14 %, and almost all already in others' machines — the move creates no new enemies. The price is not with voters: the party whip (deselection), a label in the quality press, the risk of interception. Profile of the executor: one whose ladder is already closed.
The underdog's election with a base of ~10 % (a typical working-class constituency of ~70K registered, 55 % turnout): a core of 10 % minus 0.5–1 % sacred ≈ 9 %; a flow from others +4–7 %; the invisibles — ~32K non-voters, conversion on a promise (not a guarantee — an honest discount: a tick ≠ a payment, probability × belief in the man) 40–60 % under two conditions — a network of guarantors (≈4,000 loyalists who have known him personally for years: "he doesn't lie" in pubs and on shifts) and months of noise. Result: 33–47 % of votes (centre ~40 %) with turnout soaring to 65–75 % — under FPTP in a multi-sided constituency this is a seat or second place; consolidating the constituency against ("we won't give you money") is unspeakable. Polls will systematically under-measure: "likely voter" models weight by past turnout; his electorate is people with zero history (the Brexit/Trump-2016 effect).
The threshold formula: 1 % + AB-EXIT = a legend without a seat; 10 % + AB-EXIT = a seat. The difference is not in votes but in four thousand guarantors.
47.5. Two live cases (Britain, June 2026)¶
The arsonist — Laurence Fox (Reclaim). 0.98 % in Clacton, a one-donor party, career burned — nothing to lose, a national-level media machine. Trajectory with AB-EXIT: detonation in 72 hours (a clip → GB News → the tabloids "£700 TO SKIP THE VOTE?!"); the press attacks the messenger instead of the question — the question has already detached (street polls live on their own). The fork of weeks 3–6: ~60 % probability — he burns the topic himself (ties it to the culture war, scaring off the half of the audience that needs the money); ~40 % — holds the discipline of one question. Electorally: 12–20 % of the constituency, no seat; the function is fulfilled in any outcome — the question has been uttered from a national platform. The ideal type-1/arsonist, the worst beneficiary.
The converter — Ben Habib (ex-Reform, no party). Broke with Farage, wound up Advance UK — maximum grievance, zero price of risk, CEO discipline, the language of figures ("I've read the budget — Westminster pays itself for your votes, here's the line"). A slow start (no viral machine), but a golden story of weeks 3–8: "the man Farage threw out asked the question Farage cannot answer" — and Farage really cannot (46.4), and the silence of the ever-answering one itself becomes news. Ceiling: a one-question movement of 6–10 % nationally (FPTP gives no seats but gives leverage over the whole flank) or Reform intercepts the topic — a party loss with inalienable authorship. In a working-class constituency of the Wellingborough type: 32–45 %, a real fight for the seat.
The synergy of the pair: one question from the mouths of a scandal-actor and a serious businessman, hating each other across flanks, stops being "a loner's quirk" and becomes a fact of the environment; an attack on the person does not work — the persons are two and different. Forecast for both: the question will outlive the bearers — this is not a defeat but the construction (the abolitionist medallion had no victorious author). Third, by zugzwang, a heavyweight is forced to touch the topic — from that moment it is national.
Related: §15 · §17 · §39 · §41 (the bearer — now refined: a detonator + heir pair) · 08_045 · 08_046 · 08_048