I’M TRYING to get my head around the sheer scale of these elections. It’s not just the size of the electorate (135m people) or the territory (8.5m square kilometres, divided into 5,365 municipalities). It’s the number and variety of candidates and posts to be filled. The race to succeed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president is the most visible important one. But Brazilians are also choosing governors, senators and both federal and state legislators. In all, 364,094 candidates from 27 political parties are running for office.

I'M TRYING to get my head around the sheer scale of these elections. It's not just the size of the electorate (135m people) or the territory (8.5m square kilometres, divided into 5,365 municipalities). It's the number and variety of candidates and posts to be filled. The race to succeed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president is the most visible and important one. But Brazilians are also choosing governors, senators and both federal and state legislators. In all, 364,094 candidates from 27 political parties are running for office.

Brazilians themselves can find the whole thing bewildering. To help voters navigate the system—in particular the 10% of the electorate that is illiterate—all candidates are identified by name, photograph and a number, whose first two digits indicate the party. Under Brazil's electoral law all candidates are entitled to some free television and radio advertising, with the amount determined according to their party's size. Those from the nanicos, or micro-parties, get just a few seconds, long enough only to bellow their names and numbers at top speed.

In this information overload, memorable candidates have a big advantage. Ex-footballers do well: Romário, the hero of the 1994 World Cup, is running for the national Congress for the state of Rio de Janeiro and should be elected easily. In São Paulo Suellem Rocha, a curvy, corseted 23-year-old would-be-deputy known as the “pear-shaped woman”, is getting a lot of attention. Also in São Paulo Tiririca (Grumpy), a singer and clown who had a novelty hit single some years ago, is polling around a million votes. His slogan: “What does a federal deputy do? To tell the truth, I don't know. But vote for me and I'll tell you.”

Not only is Tiririca likely to get the highest number of votes of any member of Congress, but under Brazil's strange electoral rules he will pull four or five non-entities into Congress with him. Although votes are cast for individuals, candidates for Congress who are elected with votes to spare pass their excess on to other candidates from the same party, or even to politicians from other parties in the same coalition. Such candidates may only receive a few dozen votes, but still displace rivals who got hundreds of times as many. It is a corrupt and corrupting system: parties find eye-catchers so that placemen can ride to power on their coat-tails.

As a foreigner, I'm not eligible to vote. It's a shame, because I'd really like to try out one of the 462,000 light, sturdy, cash-register-sized voting machines that together constitute the world's most advanced electronic voting system. They were introduced not only to make it easier to vote in this complex, multi-layered democracy, but to cut corruption by ending the possibility of ballot-box stuffing. The use of biometrics to identify voters, being tested this year, should cut out impersonation too. Sadly, they can't deal with other common sorts of corruption: people can still sell their votes, and even a candidate elected with the most modern technology may go on to be a thief in office.

The machines would be impressive anywhere; in this vast, chaotic country they are astonishing. Because of them all results should be known within 24 hours of the polls closing. In a way it's depressing: this wonderful technology and a million people are going to use it to vote for Tiririca.