The Four-Year Itch

The only race where the number of candidates
has fallen is for president. Instead of 12
candidates there are only six.

According to Agência Brasil, the official voice of the Brazilian government, citing a report from the Superior Electoral Court, 18,151 candidates are running for 1,600 offices in the executive and legislative branches in this year's elections, which will take place on October 6. That same day, Brazilians will also be electing their next President.

The largest number of candidates, 12,978, is running for state legislatures (deputado estadual), where there are 1,059 seats at stake. In 1998, the date of the previous election, there were 9,918 candidates.

This year's race for the 513 seats in the lower house (deputado federal) involves a total of 4,629 candidates, compared to 3,354 in 1998. With two-thirds of the Senate up for grabs this year, 334 candidates are running for 54 seats there, compared to 165 in 1998 when 27 seats were vacant.

A total of 210 candidates are running for 27 governorships, compared to 174 in 1998. Finally, the only race where the number of candidates has actually fallen is for president. Instead of the twelve candidates who ran in 1998, this time there are only half that, six.

The same Agência Brazil informs that the Chief Justice of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Nelson Jobim, has delivered a final report evaluating the Brazilian electronic voting system to the heads of congress, representative Aécio Neves and senator Ramez Tebet. The evaluation was conducted by the University of Campinas (Unicamp). According to Jobim, the report says the system is "robust, secure and trustworthy."

For this year's October elections, a total of 114 million Brazilians are eligible to vote. There will be 406,000 electronic voting machines; as a further security check, 51,000 of them will have a printout capacity.

This information was originally published in the Agência Brasil site at www.radiobras.gov.br

Send your
comments to
Brazzil