Ridgeway State Senate
Senate Portal
Handbook
Everything a member of the Ridgeway State Senate staff needs to operate the Senate Staff Portal — what each role can access, what it cannot, and how to get the everyday jobs done. Written for Senate Staff, Senators, Chairs, Leaders (Majority Leader & Clerk), and the State Registrar.
Overview
The Senate Staff Portal is the working chamber floor of the Ridgeway State Senate: where bills are drafted, sessions are run, votes are cast, and the Code of Statutes is maintained. It is a restricted area — you must be signed in and hold at least Senate Staff access to enter.
What you see inside the portal is not the same for everyone. The portal presents role-specific views — Senate Staff / Clerk's Office, Senator, Chair, State Registrar, and Administrator — and shows only the ones relevant to your role and appointments. This handbook explains each role in turn: where you land, what tools you get, where the walls are, and the recipes for the common tasks.
How access works
Your powers come from two independent layers. Understanding the split explains almost every "why can / can't I…" question.
Layer 1 — Your site role (from your Roblox group rank)
You sign in with Roblox, and the portal reads your rank in the Ridgeway Roblox group and maps it to a site role and numeric access level — State Senate becomes Senator, Lieutenant Governor becomes the Chair, and so on. Your role re-syncs from your group rank every time you sign in, so a promotion or demotion in the group takes effect on your next login. (A Registrar can also set a role by hand under Manage Users; a hand-set role is pinned and then stops following the group until it's changed again. Senate Staff and State Registrar are manually assigned portal roles; neither represents a chamber seat.)
Layer 2 — Chamber appointments (offices layered on top)
Some jobs — presiding, setting the agenda, keeping the motion record — are appointed offices, not group ranks. The Registrar grants them inside the portal under Manage Users. There are three:
Each office has exactly one holder; granting it to someone new removes it from whoever held it before. President Pro Tempore and Majority Leader require a member at Senate level or above. The Clerk may instead hold the non-voting Senate Staff role.
Getting in
- Go to
/senate-portaland sign in with Roblox. - The server checks your role. Below Senate Staff level, you get a polite access denied page.
- At or above Senate Staff level, you land on your highest view. A newly assigned role or a fresh appointment? Reload once to pick it up — the portal doesn't live-update mid-session.
The permission ladder
Administrative levels are cumulative for portal tools, but holding a chamber seat is separate. Senate Staff can enter without becoming a Senator, and officers above the chamber-member band do not gain a vote merely because their level is higher.
| Role | Roblox rank | Level | Portal view | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Senate Staff | Assigned in portal | 190 | Senate Staff / Clerk's Office | Read the calendar and motion record; no chamber seat or vote. |
| Senator | State Senate | 200 | Senator | Draft legislation, cast floor votes. |
| State Cabinet | State Cabinet | 210 | Senator | Executive officers. Portal access above a senator's, but no seat — they do not appear in the Senate directory, on the roll, or in the quorum count, and they do not vote. |
| Chair | Lieutenant Governor ·or· Pro Tempore appt. | 300 | Chair | Preside: sessions, agenda, floor votes. |
| Registrar | State Registrar appt. | 400 | Registrar + Chair + Senator | Edit the law; codify, moderate, manage users. |
| Governor | Governor | 500 | Governor's Desk + Registrar + … | Sign or veto bills the Senate has passed; all Registrar powers. |
| Administrator | Developer Oversight | 900 | Administrator + all | System: API keys, roles table, broadcasts. |
| Holder | Holder | 1000 | Administrator + all | Reserved ownership rank; everything an Administrator can do. |
Appointments (granted in-portal, independent of rank): President Pro Tempore → full Chair · Majority Leader → order of business only · Senate Clerk → the docket & motions.
Who sits in the chamber. Voting, the attendance roll and the quorum count are limited to
level 200 — Senators, and no one else. Const. Art. III §V fixes the Senate at nine
Senators, so a seat is not something a higher permission level confers: State Cabinet, the Registrar, Governor and
Administrator administer the Senate but are not members of it; Senate Staff at level 190
support it without holding a seat. None of them appear on the roll or cast floor votes.
How to read this guide
Each role section below follows the same shape, so you can skim to your own and stop:
A ✓ means full access, a ◑ means limited or scoped access, and a — means none. Every write action in the portal is recorded in the activity log.
Senate Staff
Senate Staff
Non-voting Clerk's Office personnel. This role grants portal access for administrative support without creating a Senate seat or conferring legislative powers.
Where you land
Can do
- Enter the Staff Portal and use the Senate Staff workspace.
- Read the session calendar and agendas, including linked bill text.
- Read the floor-motion record and see who holds each chamber office.
- Serve as Senate Clerk when the Registrar grants the separate Clerk appointment.
Cannot do
- Draft, co-sponsor, amend, or submit legislation.
- Appear on the attendance roll or count toward quorum.
- Cast a floor or advisory vote or propose a motion.
- Schedule sessions, build agendas, or edit law.
Senators
Senator
The baseline for everyone in the chamber. Every member with portal access — Chairs and the Registrar included — is a Senator first and keeps every power on this list.
Where you land
Can do
- Draft documents — bills, resolutions, and nominations, auto-numbered
for the sitting Senate (
S12-01,R12-03,N12-02). - Structure them with formatted sections: preamble, findings / WHEREAS, sections, definitions, repealer, and more.
- Add co-sponsors by username. Co-sponsors can edit the document's sections and save revisions with you.
- Version control — snapshot revisions with a message; a snapshot is taken automatically when you submit.
- Submit for review — hand a finished draft to the Chair's queue.
- On the floor (while a session sits): propose a motion, cast your Yea / Nay / Abstain on any live vote, and withdraw a motion you proposed.
- Weigh in on amendments — register support or opposition on statute amendments the Registrar puts forward.
- Follow the chamber — session calendar, agenda, attendance, the activity feed, and the roster of chamber leadership.
Cannot do
- Edit another member's draft unless you are a co-sponsor — and never rename, delete, or submit someone else's document.
- Schedule or run a session, build the agenda, or open and close votes.
- Process motions — proposing is yours; putting one to a vote is the Chair's or Clerk's.
- Touch the law — no editing statutes or the Constitution.
- Manage people or petitions — no user roles, appointments, or petition moderation.
Chairs
Chair · President of the Senate
The presiding officer of the chamber. The Lieutenant Governor is President of the Senate; when that office is vacant or its holder absent, the chamber's own President Pro Tempore presides instead, an appointment that raises a senator's effective level to the Chair tier. Everything a Senator can do, you can do too.
Where you land
Can do
- Schedule & run sessions — create a session, then open, recess, and close it from Session Control.
- Build the agenda — add items, reorder them, and remove them.
- Rule on questions of order — put a submitted measure upon the docket, hold it, or return it to its author with a note. Yours alone is ruling a measure onto the docket that the rules would bar; the ruling is recorded, and the members may overturn it by two-thirds under Rule V.4.
- Preside over voting — open and close floor votes on agenda items, tally roll-calls, and record voice votes.
- Handle motions — put a member's motion to a roll-call, record a voice vote on it, or table it.
- Keep the record — record attendance and read the full member-by-member vote matrix.
- Move amendments — advance a statute amendment through review, grant floor approval, or table it.
- Set the sitting Senate number — the value that drives document numbering.
Cannot do
- Edit the Code of Statutes or the Constitution — presiding is not drafting the law.
- Publish an amendment into the code (you approve it on the floor; the Registrar publishes).
- Codify a passed bill into statutes.
- Moderate petitions or manage users, roles, and appointments.
- Issue Developer API keys or send portal broadcasts.
Members can still answer for themselves from their own dashboard — the two doors write to the same record, and whichever came last stands. Every answer an officer enters is marked recorded in the sheet, so the roll always shows which lines the chamber heard from the member and which an officer wrote down.
Leaders — Majority Leader & Clerk
Two appointed offices carry a single slice of Chair power without the full chair. They are granted by the Registrar in Manage Users. The Majority Leader is layered on a member's Senate rank. The Clerk can be either a Senator or non-voting Senate Staff.
Majority Leader
Sets the order of the chamber's business. Gains a trimmed Chair view, relabelled “Majority Leader,” with only the agenda-setting tools — the presiding panels are hidden, and so is everything that has not yet been docketed.
That sentence is the whole shape of this office in the portal. Whether a measure is in order — and so whether it reaches the docket at all — is a parliamentary question, and it belongs to the Chair and the Secretary. You decide what the chamber takes up first, out of what they have put there.
Where you land
Can do
- Schedule sessions and put them on the calendar.
- Compose the agenda for any scheduled or sitting session — add, reorder, and remove items, days or weeks ahead.
- Correct or call off a sitting that hasn't begun — edit its title and date, postpone it, or cancel it.
- Read the docket — every measure the Chair or the Secretary has found in order — and calendar any of it.
- Carry unfinished business over from one sitting to the next.
- See the chair overview statistics.
Cannot do
- Rule a measure in order or docket it. Submitted measures do not appear to you until an officer with docket power has passed on them.
- Hold a measure, or return one to its author. Both are rulings that a measure is not fit to be taken up.
- Calendar something that isn't docketed — the server refuses it even if you have the bill's number.
- Open, recess, or close a session — scheduling is not presiding.
- Run floor votes or record attendance.
- See the vote matrix or move amendments.
- Set the Senate number. These all need an actual Chair.
Best practice
Build the calendar before the day, not on it. The Agenda Builder opens with a “Building the agenda for” dropdown listing every scheduled and sitting session, soonest first. Pick the session first — everything below the dropdown belongs to whichever calendar is selected, and the panel always names it. You can load up next Tuesday's agenda while today's session is live; nothing reaches the floor until the Chair opens that session.
A workable rhythm: the Chair and the Secretary work the submissions queue and put what is in order upon the docket. Everything on your Docket panel has already cleared that. When you schedule a sitting, work from it, add items in the order you intend to take them, then drag to sequence them. Reordering saves as you drop; if the server rejects it (because someone else changed the calendar underneath you) you get told and the list reloads rather than silently keeping a stale order.
If a measure you are expecting isn't there, it hasn't been ruled on yet — or it has been held. That is a question for the Chair or the Secretary, not something the Agenda Builder can route around. Under Rule X.3.b you are also the one who reports to the chamber on anything that has sat on the docket more than five days without being reached.
Removing versus withdrawing. The ✕ only appears on items nothing
has happened to yet; it deletes the entry and sends any attached bill back to the review queue
so it can be calendared again. Once an item has been voted on it can only be
withdrawn — the entry and its roll call stay in the record. This is deliberate:
a recorded vote is the chamber's journal and is not erasable from the calendar screen.
When a session closes, anything never reached is marked skipped and its bills return to the queue. Rather than retyping them, open the old session and use carry over to re-parent unfinished business onto the next sitting, which keeps each item's bill link, number and type intact.
Senate Clerk
The Secretary of the Senate — the chamber's Chief Administrative Officer under Rule II.1. You receive every measure that is introduced, review it for order, and keep the motion record while the Chair presides. The appointment unlocks a dedicated Clerk's Office view for Senate Staff and adds the same office tab for a Senator serving as Clerk.
Where you land
The Clerk's Office tab holds the motion record and processing controls. A Senator appointed Clerk keeps the Senator view too; Senate Staff do not receive it. Motion controls appear only while a session is open or in recess — between sittings the desk explains that motions become available when the floor opens.
Can do
- Review every submitted measure for order and enter the ones that are in order upon the docket.
- Hold a measure off the docket, with a reason, or return it to its author for correction.
- Put a motion to a roll-call vote.
- Record a voice vote on a motion.
- Table a motion.
- Open and close the vote on a motion item on the agenda.
- Move a pending floor amendment before the chamber.
- Call the roll — take attendance, and write down each member's answer as the Chair calls it in-game, from the Roll Call panel. Rule II.1 makes you the chamber's Chief Administrative Officer; keeping the record while the Chair presides is that office.
- Keep the roll of the Senate — each member's honorific (Mr. / Ms. / Mx.) and the constituency they sit for, which is how the printed header of every document they introduce addresses them.
Cannot do
- Docket a measure the rules bar. You see the finding and the rule it rests on, but ruling past it belongs to the President in the chair (Rule I), and the members may overturn that ruling by two-thirds (Rule V.4). Advise the Chair; don't rule for them.
- Build the agenda or schedule / control sessions.
- Open or close votes on bill items — the Clerk's reach is motions only. You may write down the answers to a bill vote the Chair has opened; opening and closing it is theirs.
- Vote, draft, or propose motions unless the Clerk separately holds a Senate seat. The appointment itself creates no legislative powers.
Reviewing for order
Every submitted measure is read against the Standing Rules automatically, and the findings sit on its card in The Docket with the rule each one rests on. Two grades: findings the rules say bar consideration, which stop the docket action, and defects flagged for your judgment, which don't.
The commonest bar is Rule VI.4: “No Short Title may name a current or former member of the Senate. Any resolution whose short title violates this Rule shall be out of order, and shall not be considered.” A measure titled after a colleague cannot be docketed as it stands — return it to its author to be retitled, or take it to the Chair if you think the naming is inseparable from the question, as it is in an expulsion resolution. Nominations are exempt: identifying the nominee is what a nomination is for.
The checks are an aid, not the ruling. If one is wrong about a measure, say so to the Chair, who can rule over it — that ruling and the finding it overrode both land in the activity log.
Best practice
When a Senator moves something, you have three ways to dispose of it, in rough order of formality. Roll call creates a live agenda item and puts the question to every member — use it when the motion is contested or consequential; it is the only route that leaves a per-member record. Voice vote records the outcome directly, without a per-member tally — the right tool for routine, uncontested motions like a recess. Table sets it aside without deciding it.
A roll call you opened is closed the same way you opened it, from the motion card. Close it deliberately: once a vote closes, the tally is final and reopening the question takes a fresh motion. If the Chair closes the session with your roll call still open, it is tallied and closed automatically on whatever votes were cast.
Governor
Governor
The final step before a bill becomes law. Under Art. III §§ III–IV — the Legislature article, not the Executive one — every bill the Senate passes is presented to the Governor before it becomes law, and the answer is a closed pair: sign it, or return it to the Senate with objections in writing.
Where you land
The Governor's Desk sits at the bottom of the Registrar sidebar. It lists every bill awaiting your action with a countdown, and below it every bill you have returned.
Can do
- Sign a bill into law. It then passes to the Registrar for codification into the Code of Statutes.
- Veto a bill, returning it to the Senate with written objections.
- Itemise those objections against named sections, so the chamber reads exactly which parts you disapproved and why — one objection per section.
- Everything a Registrar can do.
Cannot do
- Vote on the floor — the Governor is not a member of the chamber.
- Amend a bill. You may object to a section; you may not rewrite one.
- Sever a bill on your own authority. Whether itemised objections return only those items or the whole bill is the State's decision, not the desk's — see below.
- Object to an enacting, whereas or resolving clause. They are not severable from the act; object to a section.
- Object to every section at once. That is a veto of the whole bill — return it as one, without items.
- Act on a resolution or nomination — those are the Senate's alone and never reach the desk.
Itemised objections, and the two regimes
The Constitution gives you one answer to a bill, not two. Art. III §III is a closed binary — "if the Governor approve, the Governor shall sign it; if not, the Governor shall return it, with objections in writing" — and the word veto does not appear anywhere in the document. There is no item veto in the Constitution as it stands.
So the desk always lets you itemise, and what the itemisation does depends on whether the State has adopted the power. The bill records which regime applied, forever.
| Whole veto — the default | Line veto — only once adopted | |
|---|---|---|
| The bill becomes | vetoed | partially vetoed |
| Sections you did not object to | come back with the rest | are law from that moment |
| The Senate reconsiders | the whole bill | the objected items |
| The override carries | the bill becomes law entire | those items become law too |
| The override fails | the bill stays vetoed | the items are sustained; the rest stays law |
| Codification | nothing to codify | the approved sections codify; disapproved and sustained ones are left out |
Either way the itemisation earns its keep: the objections are printed against the sections they reach, the disapproved sections are struck through and marked [DISAPPROVED] in the document, and the override motion is built out of them. A disapproved section keeps its number — it is struck, never deleted, because renumbering the sections after it would silently invalidate every citation to the act.
Best practice
The five-day clock is real. A bill left unsigned for five days becomes law without your signature (Art. III §IV) — the desk shows the days remaining, and the count turns amber on the last day. Inaction is a decision, so treat the queue as a standing obligation rather than an inbox.
A veto requires written objections — the portal will not accept one without them, because the constitution does not. Write them for the Senate, not for the record alone: they are shown on the bill, on its public page and on the override motion, and they are the only account the chamber has of why you returned it. The Senate may override by two-thirds of the members present, which the Chair calendars from the returned list; a simple majority is not enough, abstentions still count in the base, and the portal scores that item accordingly.
Executive & the State Register
The Senate makes law; the executive issues instruments under it, and those go into the
State Register. This is not a site invention —
2 R. Stat. § 222.101 puts a State Register in the State
Recorder's hands (the Secretary of State, per § 221.102) and requires the registration of
"all policies and regulations of the agencies and departments"; § 222.103 admits them
unless a statute exempts them. The Register is public at
/register.
Issuing authorities
Three offices issue into the Register, and they are reached two different ways. The Governor is a Roblox rank, so that office is a level. The Attorney General is elected (Const. Art. IV §VI) and the Secretary of State is appointed by the Governor with the Senate's consent (Art. IV §VII) — neither maps to a rank, so a State Registrar records them in Manage Users alongside the chamber offices.
Who issues what
| Instrument | Governor | Attorney General | Secretary of State |
|---|---|---|---|
| Executive order | ✓ | — | — |
| Proclamation | ✓ | — | — |
| Rule | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Departmental order | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Notice | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Where you land
Drafting
The desk works like the bill builder, deliberately: the same section blocks, the same
live typeset preview, the same save-and-snapshot rhythm. A leading - makes a
subsection and -- a sub-subsection, exactly as in an act. A new instrument
starts with your office's authority clause already recited, so nobody has to remember
the formula.
Can do
- Draft, edit and snapshot instruments of your own office.
- Sign and issue — which mints the number and publishes.
- Revoke an instrument of your own office that is in force.
- Supersede an earlier instrument of the same office when issuing.
- Withhold the text under § 222.104, on a stated ground.
Cannot do
- Touch another office's documents. Their drafts are invisible to you, and you cannot sign or revoke what they issued.
- Edit an issued instrument. It is a public act — amend it with another instrument, or revoke it.
- Issue an instrument your office doesn't have. The Attorney General issues no proclamations.
- Issue an untitled or empty document, or number one without issuing it.
- Assign the RSR citation. § 222.102 is the State Recorder's job; that sits with the Registrar tier who maintain the Code.
Issuing is the point of no return
Signing mints the number, fixes the text and publishes the document. Numbers are minted
at issue, never at creation, so an abandoned draft cannot punch a hole in the
series — and each instrument runs its own sequence, so E.O. 12 and
Proc. 12 are different documents. A revoked order stays in the Register
marked revoked: that is the record, not a deletion.
Registrar
State Registrar
Keeper of the law. The Registrar has full edit-and-publish authority over the Code of Statutes and the Constitution, moderates petitions, and manages the chamber's people. No Roblox rank grants it: the State Registrar is an assigned site role, held by the officer who maintains the Code. Presiding is a separate job — it belongs to the Chair. Because the level is 400, a Registrar also holds every Chair power — they can preside and set the Senate number. They are not members of the chamber, however: the roll, the quorum count and the floor vote are limited to Senators.
Where you land
Can do
- Edit the Code of Statutes — create, edit, and delete titles, chapters, and sections; rewrite body, history, and notes; set offense classification (class, max fine, max jail).
- Edit the Constitution — create, edit, delete, and reorder articles and sections.
- Publish amendments — put an amendment forward, then once the floor approves it, publish: the old text is archived and the section is rewritten (or repealed).
- Codify signed bills — map a signed bill's sections into a target chapter; the bill becomes enacted. (Bills only — resolutions and nominations don't codify, and a bill the Governor hasn't signed is refused.)
- Record court rulings — log a ruling that strikes down, narrows, stays, or upholds a section; it shows as a badge in the public grid.
- Moderate petitions — set a petition active, qualifying, certified, or rejected, or remove it as a takedown.
- Review history & restore — read the change log and restore archived statute text.
- Manage users — assign site roles, grant or withdraw the chamber appointments, and remove members.
- Mark offences live in the game — in Game Sync, decide which R.C.C. and R.V.C. charges the game should carry. Marking one live records the decision and queues it as Pending changes; it does not itself reach the game.
Cannot do — the guardrails
- Act on a peer or a superior — you can't change the role, remove, or re-appoint any user whose level is at or above your own.
- Touch a protected account — protected super-admin accounts are untouchable from the portal entirely.
- Give a leadership office to non-members — President Pro Tempore and Majority Leader require Senate level. The Clerk is the sole exception and may hold the Senate Staff role.
- Issue Developer API keys, send broadcasts, or invite — those are Administrator-only.
- Push change requests to the game — you decide what should be live; sending it is Administrator-only.
Best practice
Codification is transcription, not legislation. Your job at the codify step is to place what the chamber actually enacted into the right part of the Code — not to improve it. Map each bill section to a target chapter and section number deliberately; check the numbers against the existing chapter first, because the sections you create go live immediately and are read by the public API and the printed Code.
Work the queue in order. Codify Bills lists bills signed into law, and bills the Governor returned in part: a partially vetoed bill's approved sections are law and codify like any others, less the sections still disapproved or sustained, which the server withholds from the mapping whatever the screen offers you. If a bill you expected is missing, it is almost always still on the Governor's Desk awaiting signature, or it was vetoed whole — that is the pipeline working, not a fault.
Prefer amendment to editing. Direct statute editing exists for corrections; substantive changes should run through the amendment flow so the chamber's support is recorded and the prior text is archived. When you do publish an amendment, the old text is archived automatically — that archive is your undo, so never work around it by editing in place.
Appointments over elevations. When someone needs the gavel or the agenda, grant the appointment in Manage Users rather than raising their level — appointments are scoped to exactly one job and are withdrawn as cleanly as they are granted, whereas a hand-set role is pinned and stops following their Roblox rank.
Administrator
Administrator
The top tier — technical oversight of the whole system. Most staff will never hold this. Included here for completeness.
Where you land
On top of every Registrar, Chair, and Senator power, the Administrator issues and revokes Developer API keys (for CAD/MDT and other apps — see the Developer API docs), edits the underlying roles table, reads the full activity log, sends portal-wide broadcasts, and issues invites. The same "can't act on a peer or superior" and "protected account" guardrails still apply.
The Administrator is also the only role that can push charges to the game.
The Registrar decides which offences should be live in Game Sync; pressing
Push is what actually sends the change requests. Two safeguards sit in front of it:
dry run, which builds, previews and logs every request without sending it,
and the fact that a charge marked not live is sent as INACTIVE rather than
deleted — the game has no delete. Every attempt, dry runs included, is recorded with who
made it.
The Administrator also holds the line-veto switch, in System Settings. It ships off, and off is the constitutional position: Art. III §III grants the Governor one answer to a bill and no power over its parts. Turning it on is not a preference, so the portal asks for the authority in writing and refuses a blank one — name the Art. VI §VIII amendment (two-thirds of the legislature, affirmed by a majority on a referendum) or the Developer Oversight action that same section allows. Whatever you record is copied onto every bill returned while the switch is on, which is what keeps an old veto meaning what it meant when it was made.
Best practice
Use the smallest tool that solves the problem. Most requests that reach an Administrator are really role questions, and a member's site role follows their Roblox group rank on every sign-in. Before editing anything by hand, have them sign out and back in — that fixes the majority of “I don't have access” reports on its own.
When a manual role really is needed, know what it costs: setting a role by hand pins it, and a pinned role is never again updated from Roblox. That is correct for synthetic roles such as Senate Staff and State Registrar, and for the Administrator super-role, but wrong for most group-backed roles — a pinned Senator who is later promoted in the group will silently keep the old level. Prefer fixing the group rank.
Chamber offices are not roles. President Pro Tempore, Majority Leader and Clerk are appointments granted in Manage Users, one holder each, and they layer on top of a site role. Pro Tempore and Majority Leader require a Senator; Clerk may be layered on Senate Staff. Granting the Pro Tempore appointment is what gives someone the gavel — do not raise their level to 300 to achieve it.
The line veto is a constitutional fact, not a feature flag. Do not switch it on to help a Governor who only wants to object to one section — itemised objections do that already, under the default regime, and they do it without severing the act. Switch it on when the State has actually adopted the power, and say where the power came from. If you cannot name the authority, that is the answer: it does not exist yet.
API keys are secrets shown once. Only the hash is stored, so a lost key is reissued, never recovered. Scope each key to what the consuming app actually reads and revoke aggressively; revocation is immediate. Read the activity log before acting on a report of something going wrong on the floor — every session, agenda and vote action is recorded there with an actor, and it usually answers the question faster than the database.
What the public sees
This is the question staff ask one step too late: is this visible yet? The line is short. A draft is private. Everything past it is public.
Pressing Submit is what publishes a measure. From that moment it is listed in the public
archive at /legislature and it has its own permanent address
— /bills/<number>, e.g. /bills/S12-11 —
which shows its full text whether or not the chamber has ever reached it. A measure that was
submitted, docketed and never calendared still has a page. That page is the link to share; it unfurls
with a title and summary in Discord, Slack and anywhere else, and there is a copy-link button on it
and on every card in the archive.
Stage by stage
| Where the measure is | What the public can read |
|---|---|
| Draft | Nothing. It is not listed, the API answers 404 to anyone who guesses its id, and its filed attachments 404 too — the same answer as a bill that does not exist, so the record does not even confirm the draft is there. |
| Submitted · upon the docket · on an agenda | Number, short and long title, sponsor and co-sponsors, constituency, status, and the full text typeset exactly as the chamber sees it. |
| Voting · voted | The tally and the named roll — every member and how they answered. That is not an exposure to manage: Art. III §IV requires the yeas and nays entered in the journal by name. |
| Presented · signed · enacted | The Governor's action and its date, and the statutes the act was codified into. |
| Vetoed · partially vetoed | The veto message in full, and every itemised objection: the section it reached, the text objected to, the objection itself, and whether the Senate overrode or sustained it. |
Capability matrix
The one-screen reference. ✓ full · ◑ limited / scoped · — none. The Clerk column shows a non-voting Senate Staff member with the Clerk appointment; a Senator serving as Clerk also keeps the Senator-column powers.
| Capability | Senator | Staff Clerk | Majority Leader | Chair | Registrar | Governor | Admin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enter & legislate | |||||||
| Enter the portal | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Draft / submit documents | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Co-sponsor & save revisions | ◑ | — | ◑ | ◑ | ◑ | ◑ | ◑ |
| Sit in the chamber · count toward quorum | ✓ | — | ✓ | ◑ | — | — | — |
| Cast floor votes · propose motions | ✓ | — | ✓ | ◑ | — | — | — |
| Offer a floor amendment to a pending bill | ✓ | — | ✓ | ◑ | — | — | — |
| Support / oppose statute amendments | ✓ | — | ✓ | ◑ | — | — | — |
| Preside & set business | |||||||
| Process motions (vote / voice / table) | — | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Move a pending amendment to the floor | — | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Schedule sessions | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Edit / postpone / cancel a scheduled sitting | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Build / reorder any session's agenda | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Carry unfinished business over | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Rule a measure in order · docket · hold · return | — | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Calendar a measure that is upon the docket | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Rule a measure onto the docket over a bar in the rules | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open / recess / close sessions | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open / close votes on agenda items | — | ◑ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Record attendance · call the roll · record members' answers | — | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Keep the roll: members' honorific & constituency | — | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Read the full member-by-member vote matrix | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Advance / floor-approve statute amendments | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Set the sitting Senate number | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Enact & maintain the law | |||||||
| Sign / veto a presented bill | — | — | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Return a bill with itemised objections | — | — | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Calendar an override of a veto or of returned items (two-thirds present) | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Enable the line veto · record the authority for it | — | — | — | — | — | — | ✓ |
| Edit statutes / Constitution | — | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Publish amendments into the code | — | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Codify signed or partially vetoed bills → statutes | — | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Record court rulings | — | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Moderate petitions | — | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Manage users / roles / appointments | — | — | — | — | ◑ | ◑ | ◑ |
| Mark an offence live in the game | — | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Push charge change requests to the game | — | — | — | — | — | — | ✓ |
| Developer API keys · broadcast · invite | — | — | — | — | — | — | ✓ |
◑ notes — Co-sponsor & revisions: only on documents you
author or co-sponsor. Chamber membership, voting and amendments: limited to level
200. A President Pro Tempore presides from a senator's seat and keeps
their vote; the Lieutenant Governor presides without holding a seat, and so does not vote.
Senate Staff (190) and State Cabinet (210) are outside the chamber band on
either side of it — neither holds a seat.
Open/close votes: the Clerk appointment applies only to motion items, never
bill items — and no vote opens at all without a quorum. Overrides: scored at
two-thirds of the members present when the vote opened, not two-thirds of those who
answered, so an abstention counts in the base. Manage users: never on a peer,
a superior, or a protected account.
Common workflows
From idea to law — a bill's full journey
Draft the bill Senator
In Draft Bills, create a new document, then fill the header block — short title, the centred long title ("To …; …;") and your constituency, which prints as "Mr. yourusername of your constituency introduced the following bill,". The header uses your Roblox username, not your nickname — this is a permanent record, and a nickname can change. The honorific (Mr. / Ms. / Mx.) and the constituency are both kept on the roll of the Senate; ask the Chair or the Secretary to set or correct yours, and every document you introduce is styled that way from then on. Write the body in blocks, add co-sponsors, and snapshot revisions as you go. Preview shows the document typeset in 12th Senate form — the same layout Export PDF produces.
Sections number themselves. SECTION 1, 2, 3… comes from the order of
your blocks, so give a section its title only — never a number. Inside a section body, begin a
line with - for an (a) subsection, -- for
(i), --- for (1). Resolutions are built from
WHEREAS clauses and close with the resolving clause.
Submit for review Senator
Hit Submit. The draft goes to the Chair and the Secretary for review, and an initial revision is snapshotted automatically. If the Standing Rules would bar the measure as it stands — most often a short title naming a member, under Rule VI.4 — you are told before it goes up, while it is still yours to fix.
Submitting is also publishing. The measure appears in the public archive and
gets its permanent page at /bills/<number> the moment it leaves draft, long
before anyone votes on it. See what the public sees.
Rule it in order & docket it Chair Secretary
From The Docket, read the measure against the automatic findings and rule. A measure in order goes upon the docket; one that isn't ready is held with a reason, or returned to its author. A measure the rules bar can only be docketed on a ruling of the Chair, which is recorded with it. Nothing reaches an agenda until this step happens.
Calendar it for a session Chair Majority Leader
Add to Agenda asks which session — any scheduled or sitting one, so next week's calendar can be built today. Only docketed measures are offered; the server refuses anything else. The Agenda Builder's dropdown selects the same calendar for reordering.
Take the floor vote Chair Secretary
Open the session, take the roll until a quorum is present, then open the vote on the item. Without a quorum the portal will not let the vote open.
The answers reach the record two ways, and you can mix them freely. Members can click Yea / Nay / Abstain on their own dashboard; or the Chair calls the roll aloud in-game and either officer writes the answers down in Roll Call, which is much the faster way to get through nine names. Members who are not there are marked Absent and stop being counted among those still to answer — so the sheet reaches “all present members have answered” and the Chair can close the vote. Closing is the Chair's, and it is final.
Present to the Governor Governor
A passing bill is presented automatically and appears on the Governor's Desk. Signing enacts it; a veto returns it with written objections; five days' silence enacts it anyway (Art. III §IV). Resolutions and nominations skip this step — they are the Senate's alone.
The pipeline forks here. The objections can be itemised against named sections, and by default that changes nothing about the outcome: the bill comes back whole, and the itemisation is there so the chamber knows precisely what was wrong with it. Only where the line veto has been adopted and switched on do the sections nobody objected to become law on the spot, leaving the bill partially vetoed and only the items to be reconsidered. Which of the two applied is recorded on the bill and shown on its page.
Override, if it comes to that Chair
A returned bill can be calendared for an override, which the portal scores at two-thirds of the members present rather than a simple majority — the base is the roll taken when the vote opened, so an abstention counts against you. That is what Art. III §III says: "two-thirds of the members present of the Senate", not two-thirds of those who answered.
A vetoed bill is overridden as one question and becomes law entire. A partially vetoed bill is overridden item by item on a single question: carrying it makes the disapproved sections law alongside the rest; failing it marks them sustained and leaves the act standing without them, because the rest of it has been law since the day it was returned. A failed override never puts a partially vetoed bill back to vetoed — there is no un-enacting the part the Governor approved.
Codify into statute Registrar
In Codify Bills, map the bill's sections into a target chapter. The new statute sections go live and the bill is marked enacted. A signed bill codifies, and so does a partially vetoed one — its approved part is law. What you cannot do is codify a section the Governor disapproved: the server drops disapproved and sustained sections from the mapping on its own, whatever the screen offered, and puts an overridden one back in. A defeated or unpresented bill is refused outright.
Building a session agenda in advance
Schedule the sitting Chair / Majority Leader
In Session Control, + New Session — title, date and type. It is created as scheduled; nothing about it is live yet. Got the date wrong? Edit details fixes it, and a sitting that hasn't begun can be postponed or cancelled outright.
Point the builder at it Chair / Majority Leader
Open Agenda Builder and choose the session in the “Building the agenda for” dropdown. The panel names the calendar you are editing and says whether it is sitting or scheduled, so you always know where items are landing.
Fill and order the calendar Chair / Majority Leader
Add docketed measures from The Docket, or type procedural items straight into the form. A number you type must match a real document — that link is what lets the roll call report back to the bill. Drag to sequence; the order saves on drop.
Hand it to the Chair on the day Chair
When the session opens, the calendar you built becomes the order of business. Anything not reached when it closes is marked skipped and can be carried over to the next sitting.
Amending an existing statute
Propose the amendment Registrar
Target a section and write the proposed text; the current text is snapshotted for comparison.
Gauge the chamber Senators
Members register support or opposition on the amendment.
Advance & floor-approve Chair
The Chair advances it through review and grants floor approval (or tables it).
Publish Registrar
The Registrar publishes: the old text is archived, and the section is rewritten — or repealed — in the live Code.
Appointing a chamber officer
Open Manage Users Registrar
Find the user. Pro Tempore and Majority Leader require Senate level; Clerk requires Senate Staff or above.
Grant the office Registrar
Assign President Pro Tempore, Majority Leader, or Clerk. If someone already holds that office, they are automatically stepped down.
They reload New officer
The new officer reloads the portal once and their added powers and tabs appear.
Moderating a citizen petition
Open Petitions Registrar
Review the petition and its signature count.
Set its status Registrar
Move it to qualifying or certified, mark it rejected (stays visible, signing closed), or remove it as a takedown (disappears from the public list).