Elections in Brazil
Brazil elects on the national level a head of state – the president – and a legislature. The president is elected for a four-year term by the people. The National Congress (Congresso Nacional) has two chambers. The Chamber of Deputies (Câmara dos Deputados) has 513 members, elected for a four-year term by proportional representation. The Federal Senate (Senado Federal) has 81 members, elected for a eight-year term, with elections every four years for alternatively one-third and two-third of the seats. Brazil has a multi-party system, with numerous parties in which often no one party has a chance of gaining power alone, and so must work with each other to form coalition governments.
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The Brazilian Voting Machines
Brazil was the first country in the world to have fully eletronic elections.
The Brazilian voting machines were developed by the Brazilian company OMNITECH, but are produced by many others companies, including Unisys, Procomp, and Itautec. The systems were originally based on the Windows CE operating system, but are being presently migrated to Linux as a cost reduction measure.
The chief goal of the Brazilian voting machine is its extreme simplicity, attempting to be as straight-forward as a public phone booth.
Electronic voting was introduced to Brazil in 1996 (when the first tests were carried in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Since 2000, all Brazilian elections have been fully eletronic.
There still remain some questions about the security of the electronic voting system, but no case of fraud has yet been uncovered. The voting system has been widely accepted, due in great part to the fact that it speeds the vote count tremendously. In the 1989 presidential election between Fernando Collor de Mello and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the vote count determine required nine days. In 2002, the count required less than 12 hours. In some smaller towns the election results are known minutes after the closing of the ballots.
Supporters of the electronic vote claim that unless the fraud were intentionally designed into the machines, it would be impossible to carry an extensive fraud in such a small gap of time. However, security has always been an issue, and the Brazilian Supreme Electoral Court regularly funds researches aimed at improving it. In order to be able to recount the votes, a printing system has been developed and a new elector's registration system is planned.
Brazil lends the machines to other countries for elections as well. They have been used in Paraguay and Ecuador and there are plans to export the patented machines.
History
Last elections
Brazil has had direct presidential elections continuously since 1989, when Fernando Collor de Mello was elected to the Presidency of the Republic (Presidência da República in Portuguese). After an impeachment in 1992, vice-president Itamar Franco succeeded him as president. The next elections occurred in 1994 for the 1995-1998 term, 1998 for the 1999-2002 term, and in 2002 for the 2003-2007 term. Fernando Henrique Cardoso (elected for the 1995-1998 term) passed a controversial Constitutional Amendment which allows the president to serve multiple times and was reelected for the 1999-2002 term. In 2002, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva became the president-elect, taking office in 2003.
See also
External links
- Electionworld (http://www.electionworld.org/brazil.htm)
- Adam Carr's Election Archive (http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/b/brazil/)
- Simulated voting machine (Portuguese) (http://www.tse.gov.br/eleicoes/urna_eletronica/simulacao_votacao/UrnaApplet2.htm) Courtesy of the Brazilian Supreme Electoral Court website. (Java required)
