August 26, 2022

16:08

Ívina Garcia – from Amazon Agency

MANAUS – The election campaign, which began last August 16 and was marked with the disclosure of the number of candidates, ‘adesivaços’ (stample action) and meetings in communities throughout the nine states of the Legal Amazon, brought to light the first electoral complaints.

In these ten days of campaigning, between August 16 and 26, 229 electoral complaints were registered in the ‘Pardal’ application of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE). The tool, which has existed since 2014, has already registered 1,330 reports of irregular electoral propaganda throughout Brazil. All the records are of irregular propaganda, although there are several options of electoral crimes.

Maria Benigno, a lawyer specialized in Electoral Law, told AMAZON AGENCY that in this beginning of the campaign, the reports of irregular advertising stand out: “It is very common for pre-candidates to anticipate and begin to present themselves, including asking for votes before the permitted period, starting August 16. And when this publicity exceeds what the Electoral Justice Department considers possible in this period, it can be analyzed as anticipated publicity”, she explains.

The lawyer also pointed out that not all the representations registered with the TSE actually represent or constitute anticipated publicity, since sometimes the candidates’ publications or actions end up being wrongly interpreted.

“It is very common for people to think that a simple announcement is anticipated advertising, but in fact the electoral legislation and the TSE’s own jurisprudence understands that any and all announcements are possible”, says the lawyer, who points out that what can’t happen is the explicit request for a vote or even phrases with subliminal requests. “Many of these complaints are actually a lack of understanding of what can be done in this period”.

Electoral complaints

According to the Pardal monitor, between August 16 and 23, the TSE indicated the Southeast region as the leader in complaints, with 438 registrations. Followed by the Northeast, with 367 complaints of irregular electoral propaganda; South with 245; Center-West with 177; and the North with 103.

In relation to the positions in dispute in these elections, according to TSE’s announcement, until Thursday 25th, the biggest part involves state lawmaker campaigns (425), followed by federal federal campaigns (355), president (249), and governor (100).

Region

Currently, the North Region has 157 registrations of irregular electoral propaganda. Most of these were registered in the state of Pará, where there were 51 registrations of this type by voters, most of them concentrated in the capital Belém, with 20 occurrences.

Next, Amazonas appears with 40 official records of irregularities in electoral propaganda, most of them in the capital Manaus, a total of 36, two in Itacoatiara and one each in Anamã and Novo Airão.

Mato Grosso comes in third place, with 37 complaints spread across the state, nine of them in the capital Cuiabá and the rest spread across 15 other municipalities of the state. In Maranhão, 35 occurrences were registered, 13 of them in the capital São Luís.

Being one of the few states where most of the occurrences were not registered in the capital, Rondônia has a total of 21 registrations, only four of them in Porto Velho, while Ji-Paraná, located 318.80 km from the capital, totals 13 reports of irregular advertising.

Going against Rondônia, the state of Roraima concentrated all the denunciations in the capital, with 15 in total. The same happened to Amapá, which comes next with 11 complaints, all of them registered in the capital city of Macapá.

Tocantins appears tied with Amapá, totaling 11 records, however, eight of them were in the capital Palmas. Acre appears last on the list, with a total of eight complaints, and just like other states, had fewer registrations in the capital Rio Branco, 2, than in the municipality of Tarauacá, 4.

Besides irregularities in advertising, it is possible to report other practices prohibited by the electoral legislation, such as: vote buying; economic power abuse; political power abuse; use of the public machine for electoral purposes; and misuse of the media. It is the responsibility of the Electoral Prosecutor’s Office to investigate all these irregularities.

The Sparrow application is available for Android and IOS cell phones, but there is also a website where it is possible to file a complaint, even anonymously. “It is very positive and makes people feel safer to file complaints”, says the specialist.

Benigno warns against the use of the tool illegally. “This increase in the number of reports is positive, but obviously the possibility of someone trying to make a report to embarrass or to create a situation for a particular political opponent is not excluded”, says the expert.

“But for this there are also penalties for those who file false complaints. The Electoral Justice has mechanisms to try to avoid that this denunciation is used to create problems for a certain political actor”, says Benigno, who also reminds that certain attitudes are “part of the political game and of democracy”.