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Legislation & Voting

Legislation is the heart of Lawmaker. Parties propose changes to the country's laws, everyone votes, and the results become part of each party's permanent record. This guide covers how to propose laws and how voting works.

How a law passes

graph TD
    A[Party proposes a law] --> B[60-day voting period]
    B --> C{More Yes than No?}
    C -->|Yes| D[Law passes, takes effect immediately]
    C -->|No| E[Law fails, status quo remains]
  1. A party proposes a law (costs 30 PP).
  2. All parties vote Yes, No, or Abstain over a 60 game-day window (about 2.5 real days).
  3. Votes are weighted by seats — a party with 100 seats casts 100 votes; a party with 0 seats can't vote.
  4. When the window closes, if Yes outweighs No the law passes and takes effect immediately. Otherwise the status quo holds. Abstentions don't count either way.

What a law looks like

Each law governs one policy area (for example, Minimum Wage Policy) and has several options representing different positions. A proposal swaps one or more laws from their current option to a new one.

Minimum Wage Policy

  • No minimum wage — let the market decide
  • Basic minimum wage — a minimum living standard (current)
  • High living wage — a comfortable standard for all workers

There are 110 laws across 19 policy areas. The authoritative, up-to-date catalogue — with each law's current setting and options — lives in the game itself, on your country's Laws page and the International Laws Explorer (which compares positions across every country). Use them to see the status quo before proposing a change.

A country that belongs to an international treaty may have some laws locked: the options the treaty forbids appear disabled in the proposal builder, and you can't propose moving the law to them.

Proposing a law

A proposal bundles 1–5 articles, each changing one law. It costs 30 PP regardless of how many articles it contains or whether it passes.

When you propose, you give it a clear title and a description making the case for it, then choose a front person.

The front person

The front person is an activist from your party who sponsors the bill. Their authority, followers, and persuasion make the proposal more convincing to voters — so put your strongest speaker on your most important bills. A proposal with no front person takes a 5% persuasiveness penalty, so always assign one.

One article or several?

  • Single-article proposals are easier to build consensus around and send a clear message.
  • Multi-article packages let you bundle a coherent agenda into one 30 PP proposal — but they're all-or-nothing, so one controversial article can sink the whole package.

Drafts and stale bills

A new proposal starts as a private draft, visible only to your party, and it costs nothing until you open it for the 30 PP vote. While it sits in draft, another party's bill can pass and move a targeted law to the very option your draft was aiming for — leaving it a no-op that would achieve nothing if opened.

Lawmaker watches for this: a draft whose law has already been overtaken gets an "Already in effect" badge, both in your proposals list and on the article itself within the draft, plus a banner naming which party made the change and when. It's advisory only — you can still open the bill — but it's a cue to edit out the stale article or discard the draft rather than spend 30 PP for nothing.

Voting on proposals

Open proposals appear on your country page. For each one you cast Yes, No, or Abstain, and you can change your vote any time before the window closes — useful as coalition negotiations evolve.

No seats, no vote

Voting weight comes from seats. A party with 0 seats in a legislature can't vote on its proposals — win seats in elections first.

A handful of laws attack the mechanisms of accountability — press control, protest bans, mass surveillance and the like. Voting Yes on one of these stains your party's autocracy score: the full points if you proposed it, half if you just voted for it. Check the notice on the proposal page before you commit your vote.

A few mechanics worth knowing:

  • Withdrawing: the proposing party can pull a proposal before the window closes, but the 30 PP is not refunded.
  • Bicameral countries: where there are two chambers, a proposal must reach a majority in all required chambers to pass.
  • Elected office veto: in countries with an elected office that has a veto, its holder's party can block a bill that the legislatures passed. See below.
  • Royal veto: in countries with a monarchy, the monarch can block a bill that the legislature passed. The veto stays hidden during voting and is only revealed if it changes the outcome.

Elected office veto

An elected office, such as a presidency, sits outside the chambers and doesn't cast votes of its own. It can still block a bill. A bill that clears the legislatures fails if all of these hold when it closes:

  • the office has a veto (it's on by default; a major constitutional change can turn it on or off);
  • the office is held; and
  • the holder's party votes No on the bill. A party's vote is normally the same in every chamber; if it differs, it counts as No only when the party voted No everywhere it didn't abstain.

The holder's party doesn't vote separately. Its one vote on the bill counts for the office as well as the chambers.

Abstaining, not voting, a vacant office and a veto switched off never block a bill. A party can't vote against its own proposal, so an office never blocks a bill its holder's party proposed. Offices have no say over budgets or constitutional changes.

The veto rule is read when the bill closes, so a bill decided after the veto was switched on or off is decided under the new setting, whatever it was when the bill was proposed. Who holds the office is also read then. The bill page shows each office with a veto, its holder and how the holder's party voted, and a closed bill keeps that record, including whether the office blocked it.

The order matters when a country also has a monarch's veto. The legislatures and the office are judged first. If the bill fails there, including because an office blocked it, any pending royal veto is discarded and never revealed. Only a bill that clears both goes on to royal assent.

Your record is permanent

Every vote is recorded forever. Voters analyse your history, other parties research your positions, and you can't delete or hide a vote once cast. A failed proposal still costs you the 30 PP and leaves the vote on everyone's record — which is exactly why lining up support before you propose matters so much.

For the tactics of when and what to propose — timing across the election cycle, vote-trading, building majorities — see the Strategy Guide.

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