How the Rhode Island scores work

The vote records

• This term is the 2025-2026 General Assembly, whose members took office when it convened on January 7, 2025: 2,499 floor roll calls (1,206 in the House, 1,293 in the Senate), Jan. 7, 2025 to June 11, 2026.
  • 2025 Session: 657 House and 652 Senate roll calls, Jan. 7, 2025 to June 20, 2025.
  • 2026 Session: 549 House and 641 Senate roll calls, Jan. 8, 2026 to June 11, 2026.
• The official record of each roll call is the chamber's Journal for that day, which names the members voting yea and nay and those who recused (the House) or abstained (the Senate); the members serving that day whom it doesn't name didn't vote. Each chamber's voting system also posts a report of every roll call, with its time, its number in the session and every member's mark, which says it isn't an official record.
• Every Journal roll call is paired with the voting system's report of it: the same day, the same counts and, member for member, the same votes; the Journal prints a day's business in calendar order and the voting system records it in the order taken, so pairs are found by measure, counts and members, not by order. 2,498 roll calls are in both records; 1 in the Journal only.
• Where the two records disagree, the roll call is left out: 43 of them, listed below. The Journal's own misprints are corrected only where its count is still the official tally: where a list names a member twice, or names more or fewer members than its heading counts, and the voting system's report holds exactly the heading's counts and differs from the list on no more members than the misprint accounts for, the report's list is used (63 roll calls, 4 in the House and 59 in the Senate). 16 Journal sentences print a count that their lists and the report contradict (the lists are used), and 7 leave out their verb ("Article 3 as amended on a roll call vote, 75 members voting in the affirmative ..."), so the result is read from the count on questions a majority decides. 3 surnames the Journal misspells are read as the report and the rest of the Journal print them.
• The House passes many bills from the Senate together on a consent calendar: one roll call, which the voting system files once and again under each measure on it. Each consent calendar (68 in both chambers) is shown once, with its measures listed; where a measure's copy shows a different vote than the roll call (5 copies), the Journal's single roll call is followed.
• Included: passage votes, amendments, the House's votes on the budget's articles one by one (64 roll calls), the Senate's 75 roll calls advising and consenting to appointments, and its procedural roll calls. Not included: the 210 attendance roll calls, and the elections of the Speaker (January 7, 2025 and May 7, 2026) and of the Senate President (January 7 and April 29, 2025), whose lists name each candidate's voters rather than yeas and nays.
• Contested votes are roll calls where the losing side got at least 10% of the yeas and nays: 255 in the House and 233 in the Senate. Every roll call has its own page. Floor votes lists the contested and party-line ones, and every roll call on request.
• Roll calls left out (43): May 22, 2025, Rhode Island House H 6306 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 12, 2025, Rhode Island House H 6088 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 17, 2025, Rhode Island House H 5076 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); May 19, 2026, Rhode Island House H 7369 (the voting system recorded it, but the Journal records no roll call with its counts that day); June 10, 2026, Rhode Island House S 3185 (the voting system recorded it, but the Journal records no roll call with its counts that day); Jan. 28, 2025, Rhode Island Senate S 12 (the voting system recorded it, but the Journal records no roll call with its counts that day); Feb. 11, 2025, Rhode Island Senate S 223 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); March 27, 2025, Rhode Island Senate H 5252 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 10, 2025, Rhode Island Senate S 615 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 10, 2025, Rhode Island Senate H 5081 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 12, 2025, Rhode Island Senate (the voting system recorded it, but the Journal records no roll call with its counts that day); June 17, 2025, Rhode Island Senate S 976 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 17, 2025, Rhode Island Senate S 985 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 17, 2025, Rhode Island Senate S 71 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 17, 2025, Rhode Island Senate S 347 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 17, 2025, Rhode Island Senate H 5108 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 17, 2025, Rhode Island Senate H 5222 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 20, 2025, Rhode Island Senate S 359 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 20, 2025, Rhode Island Senate S 359 (the voting system recorded it, but the Journal records no roll call with its counts that day); Jan. 13, 2026, Rhode Island Senate S 2067 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); March 31, 2026, Rhode Island Senate S 2401 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 4, 2026, Rhode Island Senate S 2987 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 9, 2026, Rhode Island Senate S 2824 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 9, 2026, Rhode Island Senate S 3339 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 9, 2026, Rhode Island Senate H 7265 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 9, 2026, Rhode Island Senate H 8544 (the Journal's lists don't add up and the voting system's report doesn't settle them); June 9, 2026, Rhode Island Senate H 7127 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 9, 2026, Rhode Island Senate H 7127 (the Journal's lists don't add up and the voting system's report doesn't settle them); June 9, 2026, Rhode Island Senate H 7127 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 9, 2026, Rhode Island Senate H 7127 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 9, 2026, Rhode Island Senate H 7127 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 9, 2026, Rhode Island Senate S 2623 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 9, 2026, Rhode Island Senate H 7127 (the voting system recorded it, but the Journal records no roll call with its counts that day); June 10, 2026, Rhode Island Senate H 8602 (the Journal's record couldn't be told apart from a voting-system report with the same counts that day); June 10, 2026, Rhode Island Senate H 8602 (the Journal's record couldn't be told apart from a voting-system report with the same counts that day); June 10, 2026, Rhode Island Senate (the voting system recorded it, but the Journal records no roll call with its counts that day); June 10, 2026, Rhode Island Senate H 7532 (the voting system recorded it, but the Journal records no roll call with its counts that day); June 11, 2026, Rhode Island Senate H 7434 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 11, 2026, Rhode Island Senate S 3361 (the voting system's report and the Journal name different members on a side); June 11, 2026, Rhode Island Senate H 7452 (the Journal's record couldn't be told apart from a voting-system report with the same counts that day); June 11, 2026, Rhode Island Senate H 8333 (the Journal's record couldn't be told apart from a voting-system report with the same counts that day); June 11, 2026, Rhode Island Senate S 3334 (the voting system recorded it, but the Journal records no roll call with its counts that day); June 11, 2026, Rhode Island Senate S 2828 (the voting system recorded it, but the Journal records no roll call with its counts that day).

Who cast each vote

• The records name members by surname ("Shallcross Smith", "de la Cruz"); the presiding officer is "Mr. Speaker" or "Madam President" in the reports and "The Honorable Speaker" or "The Honorable President" in the Journals. Each name goes to the one legislator of that surname holding a seat in that chamber that day; no two members of a chamber share a surname this term. Every name on every roll call used matched exactly one legislator.
• Names and terms come from Open States' data on Rhode Island legislators, checked against the Journals: Senate President Dominick J. Ruggerio (District 4) died on April 21, 2025 (the Senate Journal's In Memoriam; Open States had April 23); Stefano Famiglietti won the seat in an August 5, 2025 special election and was sworn in on August 14, 2025; Representative Julie Casimiro (District 31) resigned on August 31, 2026. No roll call fell between a departure and the successor's first day. After Ruggerio's death the Senate's voting board kept his name, marked not voting, until his successor took the seat; that mark is the vacant seat and isn't counted.
• No legislator changed parties during the term. Representative Jon Brien is an independent.
• Each build checks our current members against the House's member list of 2026-10-22 (names, districts and parties) and against each senator's page on the General Assembly's site (names and districts; the pages show no party).
• Photos are the official portraits the General Assembly posts on each member's page.

Votes with the Speaker or Senate President

• Each chamber is measured against its leader on the day of each vote. The House elected K. Joseph Shekarchi (District 23) Speaker on January 7, 2025, Speaker since 2021; he stepped down as Speaker on May 7, 2026, staying on as a representative, and the House elected Christopher R. Blazejewski (District 2), its Majority Leader, Speaker that day. In the Senate, Dominick J. Ruggerio, President since 2017, led until he died on April 21, 2025; the Senate elected Valarie J. Lawson (District 14), its Majority Leader, President on April 29, 2025. All of them vote like any member.
• The score is the share of roll calls on which the member voted the same way, yea or nay, as their chamber's leader that day. A roll call counts only when both of them voted yea or nay. The House's leaders voted on 1,193 of 1,206 House roll calls (nay on 33); the Senate's on 1,252 of 1,293 Senate roll calls (nay on 22). President Ruggerio voted on few roll calls before his death.
• The headline number uses contested votes. On unanimous votes nearly everyone agrees with the leader, so the share on all votes, shown alongside, is high for almost everyone.
• A score needs at least 20 votes. The leaders aren't scored against themselves while they lead.
• This works like “votes with the President” on the Congress pages, with one difference: the President's position on a bill comes from the White House's public statements, while the leader's position here is the leader's own recorded vote.

Votes with own party

• Counts party-line votes: roll calls where most Democrats voted one way and most Republicans the other (287 in the House, 206 in the Senate). The score is the share of those votes where the member voted with most of their own party. The Congress pages use the same definition. Democrats hold most seats in both chambers; the Republican caucus is small (10 representatives and 4 senators), so "most Republicans" can be very few members.
• Partisan rank orders each chamber's current members by this score, whichever their party: 1 votes with their party most often, and the last votes with it least. Members shown with the same whole percent share a rank, and each legislator's page says how many share it and how many vote with their party more often.
• A score needs at least 20 party-line votes.
• The table of contested votes on each legislator's page marks every contested vote where they voted against most of their party, whether or not it was a party-line vote, so it can list more votes than the score counts.

Didn't vote at roll call

• The share of roll calls, while the member was in office, on which they didn't vote yea or nay. The Journals don't say why a member didn't vote; a recusal (House) or abstention (Senate) is listed apart on each vote page.
• “In office” means the member held a seat that day, whether or not they voted.

The seat chart

• Each chamber's current members are seats, ordered from most liberal (left) to most conservative (right). There's no DW-NOMINATE score for state legislators, so the order comes from the General Assembly's own contested votes: for every pair of members, the share of contested roll calls on which they voted the same way, scaled to one left-right dimension (Poole's agreement-score method, the usual first step of roll-call scaling). Republicans are on the right. A member with fewer than 20 contested votes sits at their party's middle.
• Color uses the same rule as the Congress pages: how often a member crosses party lines toward the middle on party-line votes, siding with the other party alongside their own party's more moderate members. Solid blue or red means almost never; purple means at least 1 in 5 of those votes.
• Rhode Island legislators break from their party on party-line votes more often than members of Congress: one in ten breaks on at least 14.1% of them, against 7.4% in Congress, and the median legislator on 3.1%, against 1.7%. So the Rhode Island pages use the color steps of New Mexico and Nevada, twice Congress's: purple at 20% rather than 10%, then 15, 10, 6 and 3%. That keeps purple for those who cross most often.
• Gray seats: no party-line score.

Bills passed

• Every bill introduced in the 2025 and 2026 sessions, from each bill's introduced text on the General Assembly's site: 2,426 House bills and 2,172 Senate bills. Resolutions and joint resolutions aren't laws and aren't counted. 2025's introductions agree, chamber by chamber, with the Office of Law Revision's “salient facts”.
• A bill counts for its sponsor, the first legislator its introduced text names, a member of the chamber where it was introduced. Co-sponsors aren't counted. The House and Senate often pass identical bills, one from each chamber; each counts for its own sponsor.
• Passed both chambers: 494 House bills and 487 Senate bills. A bill became law when the Governor signed it or let it take effect without a signature: 898 public laws and 81 local acts (a city's or town's charter, bonds or taxes, or one person's leave to solemnize a marriage), counted apart and not ranked. 2 were vetoed and none overridden. Laws and vetoes come from the Office of Law Revision's lists, whose public laws and local acts agree with its salient facts; where a list misnumbers a bill (five rows) or misprints a date (two), the bill's text and both chambers' roll calls settle it. Law Revision's 2026 list has no chapter 1 and prints H 8230's row twice (chapters 75 and 76), so two of 2026's 427 public laws can't be tied to a bill and aren't credited; it gives no enactment date for chapter 84 (the budget, H 7127), which is shown without one. The 2026 Senate's introduced texts number 1,376 against Law Revision's 1,372 introductions; the texts are what's counted.
• Ranks are among current members of the chamber, and among current members of the chamber in the same party: 1 has the most, and members with the same number share a rank. Members who took office during the term had less time to pass bills.

Budget projects

• These pages don't credit budget items to Rhode Island legislators.

The November 3 ballot

• All 75 House seats and all 38 Senate seats are up, for two-year terms. The members elected take office when the General Assembly convenes in January 2027.
• The candidates come from the Department of State's 2026 General Election list (“Candidates in Upcoming Elections”), read by hand in a browser on Oct. 22, 2026: its site and the Board of Elections' answer automated readers with a bot check, which Capitol Lens doesn't work around. A candidate is on the ballot where the list says so (“On Election Ballot”); it also keeps candidates who withdrew or lost a primary. Only names, parties and districts are kept; the list shows no addresses. 141 candidates: 95 for the House and 46 for the Senate, at least one in every district; 8 seats have no incumbent running. An independent candidate's ballot designation is shown as printed (“Independent - Socialist”).
• The address lookup and the district map use the districts drawn in 2022, the ones the members elected in 2022 and 2024 represent.

Recent key votes

Each legislator's page lists their five most recent key votes, and its voting record opens with their key votes (the newest 300) until the whole record loads. A key vote is a contested or party-line roll call (both as defined above) that gave the chamber's last word on a whole bill, budgets included: its passage, agreeing to the other chamber's changes, adopting a conference committee's report or accepting the Governor's amendments, or a vote to override a veto. We read that from the motion as the record names it. Amendments, procedural motions and the adoption of resolutions aren't key votes, and neither is a motion we haven't listed. This term, 247 of the Rhode Island House's 1,206 roll calls and 224 of the Rhode Island Senate's 1,293 are key votes.

Next to each key vote is the bill's plain-language explanation where one has been checked against the official text (below); where there isn't one yet, the page says so rather than describe the bill another way.

Bill explanations

Rhode Island vote pages don't carry an explanation of the bill yet. Each page's title is the bill's subject as its introduced text heads it, and the page links to the bill's text on the General Assembly's site.

Data sources and downloads

Everything these pages show can be downloaded, free to reuse. Percent columns ending in “_shown” are the whole numbers the pages show; the counts behind each one are beside it. Terms of reuse

• members.csv: Every Rhode Island legislator this term with each score, the counts behind it and the whole percent the pages show.
• votes.csv: Every Rhode Island floor roll call with its totals, whether it was contested or party-line, how the leader and each party's majority voted, and the official record.
• member-votes.csv: How every Rhode Island legislator voted on every floor roll call.
• bills.csv: Every Rhode Island bill this term with its sponsors, its kind (statewide, local or claim) and how far it got.

Checks

• PASS: Rhode Island House: current members match the chamber's own list — 74 members and 1 vacant seats agree
• PASS: Rhode Island Senate: current members match the chamber's own list — 38 members and 0 vacant seats agree
• PASS: Rhode Island: every bill's sponsors are legislators on these pages, and their counts add up — 4,598 sponsor credits on 4,598 bills
• PASS: Rhode Island: every bill's sponsor tied to one legislator of its chamber; each session's public laws and local acts agree with Law Revision's salient facts (its lists' own gaps and repeated rows listed) — all of them
• PASS: Rhode Island: the vote-by-vote download's files match the state's settings — member-votes.csv
• PASS: Rhode Island: the address lookup's file lists every seat's holder — 113 seats
• PASS: Rhode Island: every vote on the records credited to the right legislator — all matched
• PASS: Rhode Island: bill explanations are approved and match their official source — 0 vote pages show one
• PASS: Rhode Island: every vote page's bill has its title — 2499 votes
• PASS: Rhode Island: every current legislator has an official portrait — 114 portraits
• PASS: Rhode Island: the current term hasn't ended — through 2026-12-31
• PASS: Rhode Island: the district map has every seat, and only those — 75 House districts, 38 Senate districts
• PASS: Rhode Island: every incumbent on the ballot links to their voting record — all linked
• PASS: Rhode Island: every Journal roll call names each member serving that day at most once, each the one member of that name holding a seat; each pairs with the voting system's report of it member for member, or is left out and listed — 2,499 roll calls kept, 5 of them in the Journal only; 43 left out and listed; 63 Journal list misprints settled by the report
• PASS: Rhode Island: Nov. 3 legislative candidates cover every seat on the ballot — 113 races