ELECTIONS-BRAZIL: Digital Ballots Slow Voting Process

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 7 2002 (IPS) - Although exit polls indicate that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the first round of Brazil’s presidential race, the complete computerisation of Sunday’s elections slowed the voting process, instead of accelerating it, due to the difficulties many people had in using the so-called electronic ballot boxes.

Voting continued several hours beyond 5:00 p.m. local time (20:00 GMT in most of Brazil, and 21:00 and 22:00 in the far western regions), the hour originally set for the closure of the voting sites.

The problems with the new system were also expected to delay the official announcement of the election results, which the Electoral Tribunal had promised for midnight local time.

Lula, the 57-year-old former metalworker, appears to be the hands-down winner in the first round of the presidential race, but until the official tally is announced, it will not be known if a run-off election — slated for Oct 27 — will be necessary.

The latest polls going into the elections gave the candidate for the coalition Lula President, consisting of the leftist PT and the Liberal Party, a good chance of winning the majority plus one valid votes necessary.

His nearest rival, José Serra, 60, has the support of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government and of the “Grand Alliance” between the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) and the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), two of the country’s leading political forces.

Long lines at the voting locations were constant all day throughout the country. At some sites, voters had to wait more than three hours to cast their electronic ballots.

Computers have been utilised for voting in Brazil since 1996, but this was the first time that the system was used across the nation. The political posts to be filled Sunday included the presidency and vice-presidency, the 513 seats in the federal Chamber of Deputies and 54 of the Senate’s 81 seats.

The Brazilian electorate, which officially numbers 115,324,050 in a country of over 160 million people, also had to choose governors for 26 states and the federal district of Brasilia, and 1,059 state legislators. Voting is obligatory in Brazil, though the abstention rate averages 10 percent.

With all the candidates identified by numbers, each voter had to type in a total of 19 figures. Errors are inevitable for people who are unaccustomed to computerised equipment.

At some balloting sites, the average time per voter was five minutes, much longer than the 75-second average predicted by the Electoral Tribunal.

With the more than 115 million people required to cast a vote Sunday, this was the world’s largest concentration in which the electronic ballot has been used.

Only India, United States and Indonesia — amongst countries with multiparty elections — have larger electorates than Brazil’s.

The voting difficulties Sunday were surprising, given that more than half of the electorate had used electronic voting mechanisms in 1998. In 2000, the entire country chose mayors and city councillors utilising computerised devices.

Those experiences were expected to facilitate Sunday’s elections. But a key difference from the 1998 elections is thought to be behind the delay: this time, each state — and thus each voter — elected two senators, not one, as in the elections four years ago.

The Brazilian Senate is made up of three representatives from each of the 27 districts (26 states and the federal district), each serving an eight-year term. The Senate is partially renewed every four years, a third in one election, and two-thirds in the following.

The novelty of voting for two senators confused many among the electorate, several people working at Rio de Janeiro voting sites told IPS.

Apparently, some voters, not knowing how to choose a second senator or how to annul a mistaken vote, slowed the process, as the voter cannot ask for assistance after beginning the voting process.

Many are believed to have tried to confirm their vote for both senators at once, when the computer required a single confirmation for each of the chosen senatorial candidates.

The delays and the long lines may have benefited the presidential favourite, Lula, of the leftist Workers Party (PT), says political analyst Fatima Pacheco Jordao, of the Grupo Estado, an umbrella organisation of O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper and other communications media.

In effect, due to the long waits, many people gave up on casting a ballot. But experts assume that there were not many PT supporters among them, as they tend to be the most faithful to their party.

Furthermore, surveys indicate that Lula has majority support among voters with higher education, who would also tend to be more accustomed to computers, points out Pacheco Jordao.

Seventy representatives from 37 countries and three international organisations — all invited by Brazil’s Electoral Tribunal — monitored the digital voting process.

The “electronic ballot box” is a genuinely Brazilian product and is not available in the industrialised countries, judge Carlos Velloso, of the Supreme Court and president of the Electoral Tribunal, commented with a note of pride during the preparatory process for Sunday’s elections.

The computerisation of the process, however, did not reduce the number of people needed to staff the voting sites throughout the country, who numbered nearly two million.

ELECTIONS-BRAZIL: Digital Ballots Slow Voting Process

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 6 2002 (IPS) - Although exit polls indicate that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the first round of Brazil’s presidential race, the complete computerisation of Sunday’s elections slowed the voting process, instead of accelerating it, due to the difficulties many people had in using the so-called electronic ballot boxes.
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