A 2004 Political Rally in Taquaritinga do Norte, PE
There’s a popular story in northeast Brazil’s political folklore: back in the 1950’s, a powerful Brazilian landowner named Colonel Chico wanted to rig local elections. He distributed ballots that had already been filled out and instructed farm workers to slip them into the voting box. “But, who am I voting for?” one worker asked. “Can’t tell you,” the Colonel replied. “It’s a secret ballot.”
On October 3, millions of Brazilian voters will use electronic voting machines to elect their president, senators, and state representatives. Brazil’s electronic voting machines are called urnas, a reference to a time not so long ago when paper ballots were deposited into urns. The electronic urnas are portable voting machines designed by the Brazilian government and manufactured by Diebold Election Systems. Unlike the United States, where voting procedures vary widely from district to district, Brazil’s procedures are federally standardized by the Tribunal Eleitoral, a branch of the justice department created solely to implement and regulate elections.
In 2004, during the nationwide election for mayors and city council members, I interviewed mayoral candidates, voters, and other election officials from Taquaritinga do Norte, Pernambuco. Taquaritinga is a rural town in northeast Brazil, where our farm is located. 2004 was only the second election that electronic urnas were used in all Brazilian cities.
“God forbid we use a system other than the electronic urna,” said 2004 mayoral candidate José Pereira Coelho. Coelho, the son of a shoemaker, was running for reelection in Taquaritinga do Norte, In 2000, the first year electronic urnas were used in local elections, Coelho won an upset victory against the PFL party, which had dominated local politics for 112 years. “The elections here are very, very close,” Coelho said while eating a plate of chicken and rice at a supporter’s home. “The electronic urna is the security that all Brazilians needed to guarantee our votes.”
The former mayor, Janio Arruda da Silva, once again Coelho’s opponent in the 2004 election, had no complaints about the urnas either. “The electoral process here is lengthy,” Silva said. “The campaign itself lasts many months. But a positive point is the electronic urna, which gives results instantly.” Silva looked at his cell phone and let it ring while his wife rushed to answer their home phone. Their house’s shutters were drawn and it’s front gate closed. “If people knew I was home,” Silva said quietly. “There would be a line outside my door.”
Before the 2004 mayoral election, each candidate had a loyal following. Coelho’s supporters, backed by a coalition of ten different political parties, are known as the calabars, or “traitors,” a reference to toppling the former, 112-year-old regime. Silva’s supporters call themselves the boca pretas, or “black mouths,” a name which comes from a local superstition that a catching grasshopper with a black mouth means good luck. The candidates also had official campaign colors—Coelho’s was red, Silva’s was blue. The municipality of Taquaritinga do Norte covers over 450 square kilometers of land with voters scattered across small townships and farms. The majority of Silva and Coelho’s 2004 constituency was made up of farmers, day laborers, and textile workers earning the Brazilian minimum wage which, at the time, was approximately $85 dollars a month. Many constituents could not read or write. Most did not have phone lines and had never accessed the internet. (In 2010 this has changed significantly thanks to inexpensive cell phones and internet cafés.)
Voting is mandatory in Brazil. All citizens between the ages of 18 and 70 must register with the Tribunal Eleitoral and appear at the voting center on Election Day. If a citizen is continuously absent from the voting process, that person cannot hold public office, cannot enter competitions to become teachers, judges or district attorneys, cannot attend a federal university, and cannot take out a bank loan in a federal institution. The law permits that, once in the voting booth, you may annul your vote or vote in blank. “A blank vote says you prefer not to vote. A null vote says you don’t like either candidate,” explained Taquaritinga’s chief judge, the Honorable Lauro Pedro dos Santos Murilo, a young man in his mid-thirties. “Those are two very different things.” His voice echoed in his chambers, a massive white room with a desk, a crucifix, and a view of Taquaritinga’s mountainside. “Whether the vote is optional or obligatory, what’s certain is that the vote ensures the growth of democratic institutions.”
With electronic voting machines, voters simply punch their chosen candidate’s numeric code into the machine’s keypad. The candidate’s picture then appears on the screen and the voter is asked to confirm their vote. Before electronic voting, Taquaritinga’s citizens voted on paper ballots signed by the local judge and president of the voting commission. The votes were collected and counted by a voting commission comprised of the local judge and voting officials approved by both parties. This led to human error—if a barely literate person drew an “x” between two candidates’ names, the voting commission had to interpret that voter’s intention. There were also instances of fraud.
“There were instances where the canvas and leather urns arrived with ballots already inside,” said Judge Santos Murilo. With the electronic urnas, this kind of fraud is more difficult to achieve. Each citizen has a voting identification number, called a Titulo de Eleitor. Voters present poll workers with their federal voting number and a photo ID. Poll workers input the voting number into the polling place’s computer system, which recognizes the voter from a national database. Only then is the voter is allowed to vote on the electronic machine. This is not only a way to check a voter’s identity, but also to make sure they only vote once. Ten minutes after the last citizen’s vote is registered with an electronic urna, the results for that particular machine are calculated and the machine prints a paper tally of votes. Copies of the tallies are posted on the polling place door, given to each candidate, and to the town’s judge, who is the official representative of the federal Tribunal Eleitoral. Voting data is also stored in an encrypted hard drive in the voting machine. This hard drive is only readable on computers hooked into the federal elections system database.
At the end of Election Day, the voting machine hard drives are placed in a car from the federal elections bureau and taken to the local courthouse. Candidates, poll workers, federal officials, and voters accompany the car in an informal parade to the courthouse. There, everyone will hear the official tally of all of the machines.
“Today, we [judges] that lead the Federal Elections Justice System have no doubt of the results of what is in the electronic voting machine,” said judge Santos Murilo in 2004. “It represents what the voter chose. What needs perfecting now is the phase before the act of voting—the campaign.”
In order to reach voters in the 2004 mayoral election, Coelho and Silva hired cars with loudspeakers strapped to their roofs. The vehicles circled the city limits from 8 AM to 10 PM each day (this time frame is mandated by federal law) playing campaign songs. On weekends, both campaigns organized rallies where the candidates on the blue and red tickets explained their platforms. The speeches were followed by music and dancing. Candidates had to hire the bands and provide transportation for rural supporters to go to and from the rallies. In 2004, the least expensive and most effective campaign method was personal contact. Silva and Coelho made regular visits to voters’ homes and attended community events. Both men attended Catholic mass, sitting on opposite sides of the church. And when a prominent local merchant died half-way through the campaign season, both candidates appeared at the funeral wearing freshly-ironed shirts, Silva’s blue, Coelho’s red.
There is another aspect to campaigning, one that existed long before the electronic urnas, and still exists despite them. “The politics of favors is a politics of exchange, or bartering,” said 2004 mayoral candidate Janio Arruda da Silva. “A favor is done in exchange for a vote. This still exists.” (When we talked about this aspect of the campaign, both candidates began to use vague language, without specific names or personal pronouns.) “For example,” da Silva continued, “someone asks the candidate for…to give them an operation for cataracts. The candidate arranges this surgery in a public hospital. And the person who received the surgery…they feel pressured to give their vote in return. For me, it is more practical to hire a doctor who can operate on many citizens, for the common good.”
One 2004 voter, who did not want to be named, said a local candidate gave her gas money to help her take her autistic son get to the doctor in Caruaru, a large city 57 km away. A female city council candidate allowed one voter to live in her mother’s house in Recife, the state’s capital, while the voter underwent thyroid treatments. Individual favors seem to be a part of the political process in Brazil. “Its part of the culture,” said Antônio de Padua, the president of Taquaritinga’s PFL party. “It happens everywhere.”
With electronic urnas, candidates have no guarantees that their favors will win them votes. Voters may receive personal favors from both parties, and then enter whichever candidate’s numeric code they choose at the polls. Brazil has alternated between military dictatorships and democracy since the fall of the imperial monarchy in 1889, and has tried to combat election fraud through out its electoral history, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Fifty years ago, in rural voting districts like Colonel Chico’s, voters weren’t given a choice. People did not matter but their ballots did. Today, things are different. While the culture of personal favors is not ideal or just, it illustrates a marked shift in the role of the voter in Brazilian elections. Voters must be courted now, and given tangible evidence of a candidate’s intentions before they head to the polling place. It’s not ideal, but it is an evolution.
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