BRAZIL'S MUNICIPAL ELECTION PRIMER - PART I

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 BRASILIA 001055 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV SOCI ECON BR SUBJECT: BRAZIL'S MUNICIPAL ELECTION PRIMER - PART I ¶1. This is Part I of a two-part series on Brazil's October municipal elections. This cable describes the structure and implementation of the elections, and Part II examines the various races in play around the country. SUMMARY AND OVERVIEW -------------- ¶2. On October 3, Brazilians go to the polls to select the Mayors and City Councils of all of the 5,560 municipalities in the country. These elections are important on two levels: they are an interim report card on the popularity of the Lula administration and the various parties, and they will bring to power the local officials who are key to implementing national programs and maintaining grass-roots party strength. In many municipalities --particularly the big cities-- the elections will also have an impact on national party coalitions into the future. Brazil's constitution regulates all elections and their timing, so that the President/Federal Congress and Governors/State Assemblies are up for election every four years (i.e., 2002, 2006),while the Mayors and City Councils are elected in the off-cycles (i.e., 2004, 2008). All elected officials in Brazil serve four-year terms, except Federal Senators who serve eight years. Executive officials, including Mayors, can serve only two consecutive terms. As described below, Brazil uses a combination of majority and plurality voting (for executive offices, meaning a second round may be necessary); and proportional voting for open party lists (for legislative offices). The electoral process, including the calendar and campaign propaganda, is tightly regulated and overseen by a hierarchy of Electoral Tribunals. END SUMMARY AND OVERVIEW. WHO IS BEING ELECTED? -------------- ¶3. The Mayors and Vice Mayors (elected on a slate) and unicameral City Councils in each of Brazil's 5,560 municipalities are up for election on October 3. Municipalities range in size from the city of Sao Paulo with 10.4 million people to towns of a thousand inhabitants. 226 municipalities have populations greater than 100,000. City Councils in small towns have authorities basically limited to community health, primary education, and municipal fee collection. City Councils range in size from 7 to 55 members, depending on the town's population. The average municipality has 32,000 inhabitants and 13 Council members. The exact number of Council members to be elected this year ;has yet to be determined, because a recent Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) ruling recalibrated the number of Council members per municipality. That ruling would cut the number of Council members nationwide from 60,300 to 51,700. While this would be a significant cost savings, particularly in small towns, the parties in Congress are loathe to see so many seats evaporate. They are hurrying to pass a constitutional amendment that could result in 55,200 Councilpersons nationwide. The amendment must pass by June 10 to overcome the TSE decision and affect this year's elections. ELECTION CALENDER -------------- ¶4. The electoral calendar is established by the TSE. For those unfamiliar with the closely-regulated process, the dates are instructive. June 10-30, 2004 - Convention season: coalitions and candidate lists finalized. July 1 - Broadcast propaganda blackout begins. No paid propaganda, polls, or programming favoring a candidate on radio or TV. July 3 - Ban on hiring and firing of public servants; ban on institutional publicity (e.g., public officials inaugurating public works). July 6 - First day of propaganda period, including rallies, posters and, sadly, sound trucks. Aug 17-Sept 30 - Period of free broadcast propaganda on TV and radio (see paras 5-6). Sept 18 - Start of period during which no candidate can be arrested, unless caught in the act of a crime. Sept 30 - Last day of broadcast propaganda, political rallies and debates. Oct 2 - Last day for sound trucks and pamphleteering. Oct 3 - ELECTION DAY (first round),polls open 8:00 am -5:00 pm. Within hours after polls close, results transmitted from nearly all 355,000 computerized voting booths to the TSE in Brasilia, which will release partial vote counts that evening. Second-round procedures (where necessary) similar to first round. Oct 18-30 is free broadcast propaganda period. Oct 31 - ELECTION DAY (second round, where necessary). PROPAGANDA AND POLLING -------------- ¶5. Election propaganda is tightly controlled in placement and content. Placement runs from outdoor billboards to broadcast media to sound trucks, each with its own set of regulations. For example, billboard owners must register their signs by June 25 with the local electoral judge, who then holds a lottery to distribute the billboards randomly to candidates. Sound trucks must stop broadcasting at 10 pm and cannot be within 200 meters of government offices or hospitals. Rallies must end at midnight. Rules are specific: propaganda cannot incite a state of passion nor try to trick voters, cannot defame an opponent or disrespect national symbols (nor provoke animosity toward the military). Posters can be hung from bridges but not trees. After the election, each campaign must clean up its posters from public spaces. Parties monitor each other and are quick to complain to electoral judges about violations. ¶6. The free broadcast propaganda is a uniquely successful Brazilian institution. Visiting US congresspersons, who may spend 90% of their campaign funds on TV time, express admiration for a system that provides free airtime to all candidates, thus reducing the need for incessant fundraising and the influence of donors. From Aug 17 to Sept 30, mayoral races get airtime on Mon, Wed, and Fri; while City Council races have time on Tues, Thurs, and Sat. The radio slots on these days are 7:00-7:30am and 12:00-12:30pm. The TV times are 1:00-1:30pm plus the key 8:30-9:00pm prime time slot. The ads run on all channels simultaneously. The minutes within these periods are distributed to the parties according to a formula mostly based on the size of the party caucuses in the Federal Chamber of Deputies, while still assuring that microparties get a few seconds of precious airtime each day. Parties in coalitions can merge their allotted times. Thus the large PT, PMDB, PFL, and PSDB parties may run five or seven-minute ads each day. The system is closely policed by all parties, with complaints quickly adjudicated by electoral judges who mete out punishments by docking seconds or minutes of airtime. ¶7. Public opinion polls are also tightly controlled. Beginning on January 1, polling agencies must register each poll with the electoral tribunals both before and after distributing the results. The registration includes poll results, who contracted the survey, costs and methodology. Candidates have the right to challenge a poll to an electoral judge, who can order a polling firm to open its records, suspend a survey, or clarify results already released. Pollsters breaking the rules can be heavily fined. CAMPAIGN FINANCING -------------- ¶8. There are no limits on donations or spending. Campaigns must register their financial committes with the Electoral Tribunal, and thirty days after the election they must file their financial statements. Funds can come from the candidates themselves, personal or corporate donations, or fund-raising events. Donations cannot come from foreign entities or public funds. Donations must be identified by origin. Unidentified donations cannot be spent in the campaign, though they can be retained by the party and used to fund party research or think-tanks. ¶9. Campaign financing rules are fairly lax by US standards and --owing to the free TV time-- the sums involved are modest: in the 2002 elections for President/Federal Congress and Governors/State Assemblies, 19,000 candidates spent a declared total of R$830 million (about USD208 million, or about USD 11,000 per candidate). Yet there are frequent allegations of illegal campaign financing and the so-called "caixa dois" ("second drawer"),i.e., secret campaign slush funds. For example, the Waldomiro Diniz scandal that erupted in February 2004 involved a political advisor to President Lula who allegedly solicited bribes from numbers racketeers in 2002 to funnel into Workers' Party campaigns; the allegations have not been verified. Similarly, last week (a year and a half after the case was filed) the Supreme Electoral Tribunal cleared Brasilia Governor Joaquim Roriz of charges that he funded his 2002 campaign with R$48 million in public money funneled through local institutions and consultants. A political reform bill that would provide a fixed pot of public money to finance all campaigns is now in Congress but will not pass this year. THE ELECTORAL TRIBUNALS -------------- ¶10. Brazil's elections are overseen by a hierarchy of electoral tribunals. At the top is the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE),an ad hoc body comprising seven members: three judges from the Supreme Federal Court, two from the Supreme Justice Court, and two lawyers, all serving two-year terms on the tribunal. Below the TSE are twenty-seven Regional Electoral Courts (TREs),one in each state; and below the TREs are electoral judges in each municipality and citizens' voting boards at each polling place. VOTING AND TABULATION PROCEDURE -------------- ¶11. Voting in Brazil is mandatory for citizens 18-70 years old and is optional for the illiterate, those 16 to 18, and those over 70. Military conscripts cannot vote. There will be about 112 million eligible voters this year. In general, Brazilian executive offices (President, Governor, Mayor) are elected by majority voting, meaning that if no candidate surpasses 50% of valid votes in the first round, the top two candidates go to a second-round runoff. However, in a cost-saving measure, plurality voting is used in the 96% of municipalities that have less than 200,000 voters (thus, U.S.-style, the leading first-round candidate becomes mayor, even if she receives less than 50% of the vote). Therefore, there may be just a few dozen second-round mayoral runoffs this year. All mayors will be sworn in on January 1, 2005. ¶12. Selection of legislatures, including City Councils, is done by a complicated open list proportional voting system, in which citizens can cast votes either for parties or candidates. There are no wards for municipal elections, all candidates run citywide. A hypothetical city of 1 million residents (i.e., about 620,000 voters) would have a City Council of 21 members. If 20% of voters do not show up or cast null votes, then there is a pool of 500,000 valid votes, meaning that each of the 21 Council seats would require 23,800 votes. Each party then totals up the votes it receives both as a party and for its individual candidates. If a party fails to reach 23,800 total votes, it does not win any seats at this stage and its votes are "lost". If a party receives 47,600 (i.e., 23,800 x 2) votes, then it wins two seats; if a party wins 71,400 (i.e., 23,800 x 3) votes, then it wins three seats, etc., distributed in order of the candidates receiving most votes. (Thus the system is "open list", rather than a "closed" system where the candidates are selected in fixed order pre-determined by the party.) By mathematical necessity, once all the parties that earned multiples of 23,800 votes receive the seats to which they are entitled, a few seats will be left over. At this point, the votes that were "lost" earlier in the process are reviewed, and the final few seats are distributed to the parties receiving the most "lost" votes, even though the total is less than 23,800 per seat (meaning that microparties can win seats at this stage). One oft-criticized by-product of this system is that popular candidates can win so many votes that they will be able to "pull in" more candidates from their own party. For example, if a candidate personally wins 71,400 votes, her party wins three seats even if the rest of its candidates receive no votes at all. ¶13. Nationwide, Brazil uses uniform state-of-the art domestically produced electronic voting urns that, since their introduction in 1996, have suffered no verified cases of fraud. The urns are simple (resembling a cash register) and durable (some will arrive at Amazonian polling stations by canoe). When the polls close at 5:00pm on election day, each of the 355,000 machines will print out its results on paper slips (for local party officials to inspect) and on a floppy disc, which the local electoral judge will immediately use to transmit the results to the Regional and Supreme Electoral Tribunals by secure intranet link. Results, urn by urn and municipality by municipality, are later made available on the internet for inspection and challenge. Within hours, the parties and media will have done the complicated calculations and fairly comprehensive preliminary results will be publicly available. ¶14. Part II of this series will examine the various mayoral races in play around Brazil. HRINAK