Founding Round rules

Voting and ranking

• Selecting a country on the map or in the list opens that country’s stable page.
• Selection is navigation only. It never casts a vote.
• One browser can hold one active country choice and change it while voting is open.
• Only accepted votes enter public totals; test and rejected activity never counts.
• Equal totals share a rank, and the next competition rank skips accordingly.

The product invariant

People vote for free. A business buys only clearly labeled Crown visibility. Money cannot buy votes, rank, or map color.

Voting and sponsorship

Voting, sponsor review, and Crown checkout are available only when their separate authoritative gates are open. Sponsor review is business-only, takes no payment, and does not reserve a Crown. A paid Crown is visibility beside a country result, never a vote or ranking advantage.

Close, review, and final result

Server time closes voting at the published cutoff. The result is provisional during integrity review. Finalization publishes one dated, immutable ranking; any material later correction is disclosed as an append-only public erratum instead of silently rewriting it. Sponsored Crowns end with the round.

Country coverage

The operational roster contains 46 Council of Europe members, Belarus, the Russian Federation, Vatican City, and Kosovo as a status-neutral product participant. This is an entertainment roster, not a statement about sovereignty, nationality, recognition, or borders.