Electoral code rapporteur removes limitations on research – 03/20/2024 – Power

Senator Marcelo Castro (MDB-PI) presented his report on the project that establishes a new electoral code in the country with changes in relation to the text approved by the Chamber of Deputies at the end of 2021.

The parliamentarian removed the limitation on the publication of electoral surveys and proposed forcing judges and prosecutors to undergo quarantine before contesting elections.

Castro will take the report to the Senate’s CCJ (Constitution and Justice Committee), when his colleagues will be able to present amendments to the text. He will be able to accept or reject the proposals of the other senators and then the proposal will be voted on by the board.

If approved by the CCJ, the project will go to the House plenary. As it is likely that the senators will change the deputies’ text, the issue will still return for further analysis by the Chamber before proceeding to presidential sanction.

Castro stated that the idea is to concentrate the seven current laws that regulate elections and political parties into just one electoral code.

He suggested overturning the device that passed through the Chamber and which provides for censorship of electoral polls — so that they can only be released until the day before the election day.

Castro also changed the text of the deputies that determines that institutes report a percentage of successes in surveys carried out by the entity or company in the last five elections.

The senator suggests that the institutes be obliged to provide a comparison of the last three surveys carried out in the previous election in relation to the result that came out of the ballot box in that election.

The idea, according to Castro, is to leave the institute exposed, since it will be forced to report the numbers it collected in the previous election.

“There are many cases involving fraud, this is all over Brazil, but it is very difficult to enact legislation to punish an institute that has defrauded,” he stated.

The senator proposes the following wording for the law: “The percentages of voting intentions for the elected candidate in the last three stimulated polls carried out by the same institute in the previous election, in comparison with the percentage of votes counted by the Electoral Court, in the respective district, in the elections for the positions of mayor, governor, senator and president of the Republic”.

Castro also argued that some public service careers are “incompatible with political activity.”

“Judge, prosecutor, police officer and military are careers that should not coexist with politics. If a person belongs to one of these careers and wants to be a politician, they leave and only four years later could they apply,” he declared.

The senator proposes that the deadline for disqualifying public office to run for elections be unified at six months. In some cases, public servants are forced to leave just three months in advance. For employees of audit courts, the deadline is four months.