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.

The Brazilian Voting Machines

Brazil was the first country in the world to have totally eletronic elections.

The Brazilian voting machines were developed by OMNITECH , a Brazilian company, but produced by many others companies, like Unisys, Procomp and Itautec. The operating system used to be Windows CE, but to reduce costs they are being migrated to Linux.

The chief characteristic of the Brazilian voting machine is its extreme simplicity, almost as straight-forward as a public phone booth.

It has been used since 1996 (when the first tests were carried in the state of [[Santa Catarina, Brazil]Santa Catarina]. Since 2000, all Brazilian elections have been fully eletronic.

There still remain some questions about the security of the machine but no case of fraud has yet been uncovered and the voting system has been widely accepted, mostly because it speeds the vote count tremendously. In 1989 the country had to wait for 9 days to know exactly how many votes Fernando Collor de Mello had won. In 2002 it took less than 12 hours. Supporters of the electronic vote claim that, unless the fraud is designed a priori and executed by means of adulterating the voting machines themselves, it is impossible to carry an extensive fraud in such a small gap of time. In some smaller towns the election results are know minutes after the closing of the ballots.

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 usually lends the machines to other countries. They have been used in Paraguay and Ecuador and there are plans to export them, since they have been patented.

You can play with a simulated voting machine at the Brazilian Supreme Electoral Court website (java needed, in Portuguese).

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). Although he suffered an impeachment in 1992, there were no major problems – his successor, vice-president Itamar Franco became president. Consequently, there were further elections 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 reelection of the president. He was reelected for the 1999-2002 term. In 2002, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva became the most popular elected president (in terms of votes) in the history of the world.

Past elections

To be added

See also

• Electoral calendar
• Electoral system

External links

• Electionworld
• Adam Carr's Election Archive