All Brazilian elections are held under the authority of the TSE, the Superior Electoral Court, a federal body. Because of this, all state and municipal elections are synchronized and conducted in a uniform manner, and voting machines are identical in every jurisdiction nationwide. Yes, Brazil since the 1990s has moved to an all-electronic voting system. In the time I have been living here, I have not heard of anything near the level of skepticism or fear of fraud with this system as what is sometimes heard from many Stateside. Most people do trust that their vote is being counted, and counted correctly. This diary is not going to get into the nitty-gritty of how this system runs, but I thought it important to mention.

Compulsory Voting

Voting in Brazil is compulsory for everyone between the ages of 18 and 70, and is optional for those aged 16-18 or 70+. This guarantees a very high rate of participation in elections and practically eliminates the need for a massive GOTV effort. It does, however, promote a large "get your name out" effort, because if there is a certain percentage of people who have to vote but don't really care to, they just might vote for the first name they see (or the one they remember from seeing so many signs, etc.). This is especially true in the wild free-for-alls of congressional elections, of which more will be said later.

If you don't vote in an election, you have to present yourself at the Electoral Court sometime afterward to "justify" your lack of participation. Maybe you were travelling and unable to get to the polls or hospitalized, etc. Anyone who doesn't vote and doesn't justify is at risk of losing social security, possibly even employment! The first thing my wife had to do when she moved back to Brazil after 7 years abroad was justify why she had not voted in several elections.

Even though you are obliged to vote, you are not obliged to vote for a candidate, however. There is always the option of voting em branco, or blank, which simply means casting a ballot without picking anyone, kind of like Nevada's "none of the above" option.

Executive Elections

Now, a bit more on how the elections work. Executive office elections (President, Governor, Mayor) require the winning candidate to receive 50%+1 of all valid votes (i.e., all votes that are not em branco). If no one achieves this threshold, there will be a runoff election held between the top two candidates 4 weeks later. This is what occurred in the Presidential Elections of 2002 and 2006. Because Brazil has a number of thriving political parties, runoff elections are quite common at national, state, and local levels.

Anyone currently serving in an executive office cannot run for another office unless he/she resigns 6 months prior to Election Day. For this reason, São Paulo Governor José Serra resigned at the end of March this year in order to seek the Presidency. This restriction does not apply to Senators or Federal Deputies (members of Congress).

Legislative Elections

In 2010, two Senators from each state (for a total of 54) will be elected. However, candidates do not run for two distinct offices in two separate races. Every Senate candidate within a particular state runs in the same election, and voters choose two, any two. Whichever two get the most votes become the state's new Senators for the next 8 years. In 2014, only one Senator per state will be elected.

Now this is where things get complicated. As mentioned in the earlier diary, seats in the Chamber of Deputies are assigned proportionally based on the partisan percentage of votes within each state. For example, if a state has 10 Deputies (based on its population), and Party A receives 50% of the vote, Party B 30%, and Party C 20%, then the three parties would be allocated 5 seats, 3 seats, and 2 seats, respectively.

All well and good so far, but we still need to determine who specifically gets to sit in those seats. In Brazil, this is done by every candidate in a particular state running all at once in a massive free-for-all, of which each voter gets to select just one. In some of the larger states, there may be several hundred candidates to choose from! Try being an "informed voter" in this situation.... Anyway, the first step in counting the votes is to total up the votes for all candidates running from the same party in order to determine a party's allocation of seats, say 5 as in our example for Party A above. Once this is done, then the top 5 vote getters within Party A would be Deputies (and top 3 in Party B, etc.).

As you can imagine, this arrangement gives a lot of power to minor political parties. Currently, there are 19 political parties with representation in the National Congress and the largest single party bloc is PMDB, with 90 out of 513 seats - just 17.5%. This makes it virtually impossible for a single party to govern alone. Coalitions must be formed between ideologically similar (or sometimes dissimilar) parties, with all of the standard political quid pro quo that goes along with that.

Current Balance of Power

Figuring out exactly who has control in a fragmented Congress with many competing and overlapping factions is not always easy. Before the TSE's ruling in 2007 that congressional seats are the "property" of political parties, it was even more difficult. A period known as troca-troca (literally, "change-change") used to follow every election, in which a large number of congresspeople would change parties, either as part of a political deal or sometimes just blatant corruption. The partisan makeup of Congress would often change on a daily basis. However, in the 2007 ruling, the decision was made that political parties themselves actually "own" the seats following an election, and any member who changes parties following an election may be removed from office if the party wishes and replaced with someone else. After quite a bit of initial complaining, this rule has become accepted, and the troca-troca has all but vanished.

Even with a fixed partisan allocation over the four-year term of Congress, it can still be difficult to determine a balance of power, because parties themselves may enter and leave coalitions, and individual party members may vote however they wish on any issue (just like the Blue Dogs do up north). However, an approximate count can be determined by looking at the parties who are currently aligned with Lula and those who are in opposition. This gives us the following numbers:

Parties supporting government:

Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) -- centrist party supporting Lula

Workers' Party (PT)

Progressive Party (PP) -- old opposition party which now supports Lula

Republic Party (PR) -- centrist party supporting Lula

Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB)

Democratic Labor Party (PDT)

Brazilian Labor Party (PTB)

Christian Social Party (PSC)

Green Party (PV)

Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB)

Brazilian Republican Party (PRB)

National Mobilization Party (PMN)

Humanist Solidarity Party (PHS)

Christian Labor Party (PTC)

Labor Party of Brazil (PTdoB)

TOTAL SEATS: 380

Opposition Parties:

Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB)

Democrats (DEM)

Popular Socialist Party (PPS) -- opposition from the left

Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) -- opposition from the left

TOTAL SEATS: 133

These numbers are not exact, because some of the larger centrist parties ostensibly aligned with the government do have some individual members that are oppositionists, and there are some members of the Green Party who are oppositionists from the left. Even considering this, it is clear that Lula's government wields significant power in the Chamber of Deputies.

Using the same partisan alignments for the Senate (with the same caveats), we get the following counts:

Senators aligned with government: 51

Senators in opposition: 30

We also find that only 5 of 27 state governors are currently members of opposition parties, though there are again many centrists aligned with the government.

Next Diary: I will begin to look at some polling of Senatorial and Gubernatorial races to see which parties are gaining and which are declining (and where), as well as continue to keep track of the Presidential race.