Overcoming Election Administration Hurdles
Ray Kennedy
The 1994 elections in Brazil were the
most important and most comprehensive in the history of one of the world's largest
democracies. On October 3, 1994, nearly 100 million Brazilians were eligible to vote, and
82% of them turned out to vote for president, governor, senator, federal deputy and state
deputy -- an opportunity that comes once in a generation, as the presidential term is five
years, senate term 8 years (two-thirds of which were up in 1994) and other office terms
are four years.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, candidate of
the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, won the presidential race in the fist round with
54.3% of the valid vote. Since Brazilian law provides for a second round of presidential
and gubernatorial elections if no candidate in those races receives at least half of the
valid vote, a second round was held on November 15 to decide gubernatorial races in the 18
of 27 states where no candidate received the necessary majority. The proportional
elections in Rio de Janeiro state were also re-run on November 15 in the aftermath of
allegations of widespread fraud during the vote count there following October 3.
Election Administration
Brazil has undertaken an ambitious
program of technological modernization of election administration in recent years. During
a visit for the 1989 presidential elections, I learned that the state election office of
Rio Grande do Sul (Tribunal Regional Eleitoral - TRE/RS) had begun a pilot project in 1983
to automate the voter registry. The goal of the project was to enable each TRE to verify
the registration status of any individual in the country and thus detect attempts to
obtain duplicate registrations. This successful pilot project was subsequently expanded
for the 1986 national re-registration exercise. Next the Superior Electoral Tribunal
(Tribuneal Superiro Eleitoral - TSE) developed new software programs -- including a
phonetically-based one -- to search for existing duplicate registrations.
In early 1989, the incumbent president of
the TSE had mentioned his interest in investigating the possibility of adapting for voting
the optical-mark scanning system already in use in the national sports lottery. Since the
method of marking the lottery ticket was widely known, even among the many illiterate
voters in Brazil, this was seen as a possible means of speeding the tabulation of votes.
For the 1989 presidential elections, the
TSE set up a sophisticated media center at the Bras�lia convention center to disseminate
the election results, which were being received by modem from each TRE. These were
displayed on a series of monitors in the main press area, each monitor covering a large
state or group of smaller states. Printed bulletins were also distributed at regular
intervals.
News conferences were held in the
auditorium, which had the national results displayed on the wall behind the speaker.
Television networks had direct read-only access to the TSEs computer, while radio and
print journalists depended on the monitors and bulletins at the convention center for
their information. Ample communications resources allowed the many journalists to file
stories around the clock.
In 1994, after hearing of recent
technological advances, especially in the state of Santa Catarina, I traveled to the
state's capital, Florian�polis, for the October 3 elections, stopping in Sao Paulo and
Bras�lia to visit the TRE/SP and TSE as well.
For several municipal referenda in 1993
and 1994, the Santa Catarina TRE (or TRE/SC) had developed an electronic voting system
based on a personal computer and a custom keyboard with six keys: begin, yes, no, blank
vote, void ballot and end. This system greatly increased the speed with which the TRE/SC
was able to announce final results. Contrary to initial expectations, the system was most
popular among voters with the least formal education. The system has since been used in
several two-candidate races as well, with similar results.
1994 Innovations
The 1994 elections represented another
significant technological advance in Brazilian election administration in that for the
first time -- with technical assistance from the United Nations Development Program --
vote totals were to be transmitted electronically from the counting centers themselves to
the TREs and from there to the TSE. Brazil has a central-count system, in which the ballot
boxes -- actually canvas ballot bags with a rigid, sealable top -- are transported to
nearly 3,000 counting centers rather than counted at polling places. Before 1994, the
electoral judge from each electoral zone was responsible for transporting the results to
the TRE. On election day, Brazilian voters
received two ballots: a yellow ballot for presidential, gubernatorial and senatorial
races, and a white ballot for the federal Chamber of Deputies and the State Assemblies.
The yellow majority-election ballots were "name on" ballots -- each presidential
candidate and the gubernatorial and senatorial candidates for a given state were listed on
that state's ballot. The white proportional-election ballots were "name off"
ballots -- there was a line for federal deputy and a line for state deputy where the voter
was to indicate either: a candidate's number or name (including nicknames and numerous
phonetic variations); a party's number; or a party's acronym or name.
Brazil's PR Electoral System
Brazil, like Finland, uses a
candidate-based, "open list" system for its proportional elections. Candidates
run on an at-large basis in their state. Votes are counted for individual candidates and
then summed to determine each party's total and the electoral quotient; seats are assigned
to parties on the basis of the electoral quotient and then to candidates on the basis of
their individual vote totals.
With at-large candidacies, large numbers
of parties and up to 70 seats to fill in each election, there could be over 2,000
candidates in a given race. Ballots are printed on plain paper with black stripes on the
back to conceal voters' intent from pollworkers when voters deposit them in the ballot
box. Ballots are not numbered, but they are signed by the poll workers to discourage
ballot fraud.
Voting is mandatory for those between 18
and 70 years of age unless they are illiterate, and optional for the illiterate and those
over 70 and between 16 and 18 years old. The TRE/SC launched a voter education program in
early 1994 targeted at those under 18 in order to encourage them to register and vote. The
president of the TRE/SC felt strongly that if 16- and 17-year-olds began to think of
voting as a right rather than an obligation, they would take it more seriously. The
program was a great success, as the state registered 127,991 new voters in that age group,
more than doubling their number.
Voters absent from their electoral
domicile on election day must go to the nearest post office to purchase, fill out and mail
an "electoral justification" to the electoral judge in their home district,
since non-voting is punishable by a fine.
The 1994 Ballot Count
The vote count officially began the
morning after Election Day when the TSE president drew the first ballots (one yellow
majority-election ballot and one white proportional-election ballot) in Bras�lia and
announced their content. Given the high number of candidates, the need to count ballots
separately for each race and the fact that counting teams were responsible for more than
one ballot "box," counting stretched beyond October 5 in many locations.
After each ballot "box" was
counted, the tally sheet was taken to the adjacent computer center for data entry and
verification. The vote totals were transferred to diskette and taken to another computer
for transmission to the TRE. TREs set their own schedules for disseminating results on
state races, but the TSE central computer polled each TRE central computer every half-hour
for updated results on all races. Results from anywhere in the country could be checked
from any point in the nationwide TSE network at the level of nation, state, electoral zone
or ballot "box." The TREs set aside computers in their offices for members of
the inter-party committees to check results.
Santa Catarina was unique in seeking
computer equipment from "members of the community" (local banks, businesses,
individuals, etc.) to supplement the equipment received from the TSE and speed the process
of compiling and forwarding results through the system. The computer operations staff at
TRE/SC set minimum specifications for the equipment to be borrowed and directed each
electoral judge to solicit enough equipment from his or her community to complete results
transmission in 30 hours. As a result of this initiative, Santa Catarina was the first
state to complete its vote tabulation.
Electoral authorities are now completing
work on installing the nationwide network in voter registration offices. This will speed
the voter registration process for citizens and increase the reliability of the voter
registry. They are also looking into how to automate the voting or vote-counting process.
Ray Kennedy is Director of Information
Resources at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (1101 15th Street NW, 3rd
Floor, Washington, DC 20005). Prior to joining the Foundation in 1990, he was Coordinator
of the Center of Brazilian Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced
Studies (SAIS) from 1983-1989.