LGBTs ask the TSE for sexual orientation of candidates – 06/27/2023 – Power

Parliamentarians and activists from the LGBTQIA+ segment will increase pressure on the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) so that candidacy records in the country include information on sexual orientation and gender identity, in an attempt to have the change take effect in the 2024 election.

This Wednesday (28), a group of politicians and representatives of the VoteLGBT movement will enter the court with a request for a public consultation on the subject. The intention is to pave the way for a decision that allows candidates to declare whether they are homosexual or transgender, for example.

According to the militants, the data is fundamental for Brazil to have official numbers on candidacies in this segment and to discuss affirmative actions in favor of representation in politics, which could involve quotas for candidates, reservation of seats and access to campaign resources.

In the 2020 and 2022 elections, the proportion of elected LGBTs was 55 times smaller than the size of this group in the general population, according to VoteLGBT, one of the non-governmental organizations that produce statistics on the subject, based on unofficial information.

For the calculation, the entity considered that 0.16% of the candidates elected in the two elections were LGBT, a category that corresponds to 9.3% of Brazilians, according to the 2022 Datafolha survey. The data, however, may be inconsistent, due to the lack of data. official record and depend on self-declaration.

The request to be filed this Wednesday, chosen because it is the International LGBTQIA+ Pride Day, is signed by federal deputies Duda Salabert (PDT-MG), Erika Hilton (PSOL-SP) and Daiana Santos (PC do B-RS) and by the Senator Fabiano Contarato (PT-ES) —all belonging to the community.

“The lack of data is a form of injustice, as it prevents the proper measurement of distortions in the political representation of LGBTQIA+ people and also makes it impossible to build policies to deal with this problem”, says Salabert, who is transsexual.

The miner claims that the lack of reliable data is even more serious in the case of people like her. “Because of transphobia, there is a huge erasure of our reality”, continues the parliamentarian, claiming policies such as those that benefit candidacies of women and blacks.

Activists say that the self-declaration of color or race, which only began to exist in 2014, was fundamental for an accurate diagnosis of the underrepresentation of blacks and that only from then on could more concrete measures be demanded, such as the minimum transfer of resources to these candidacies.

The victory of transsexuals like Salabert and Hilton or homosexuals like Santos and Contarato is celebrated, but militants argue that the political representation of the class is far from ideal.

According to the document that will be filed, under-representation is a form of political violence, and the difficulty in reaching command posts threatens the construction of a citizen and plural society.

The TSE says that changing LGBTQIA+ candidacy records is one of the topics discussed by the working group that prepares the rules for next year’s elections. Today, any voter already has the option of declaring their gender identity, but the system is being updated gradually.

Last month, the president of the court, Alexandre de Moraes, received parliamentarians (some of them also involved in the now articulation), lawyers and representatives of movements that press for changes. The idea is that, in the long term, all voters’ records will contain the data.

Moraes indicated at the meeting that the change in candidacies could take effect in 2024. The militants hope that the decision will be announced before October, to remove questions related to the principle of annuality —which provides that rules can only be modified within a maximum of one year of the year. lawsuit.

Advocates of adding fields on sexuality and gender anticipate criticism and argue that filling in the information is optional, so that there is the alternative of not expressing your opinion about these characteristics.

They also say that it is inappropriate to speak of violation of the General Data Protection Law (LGPD).

“Without the data, we could not demonstrate the degree of political inequality”, says Evorah Cardoso, doctor in legal sociology from USP and spokesperson for VoteLGBT.

According to her, the public consultation model was chosen to favor the participation of civil society and the Legislature in the debate. If the TSE agrees to open the procedure, a rapporteur justice will be chosen, who will finally give an opinion on the subject in accordance with the court’s jurisprudence.

VoteLGBT was successful in adopting a similar procedure, in 2018, when it took to the court a query signed by then Senator Fátima Bezerra (PT-RN), now governor of Rio Grande do Norte, on the authorization for transgender candidates to use the social name.

For Evorah, detailing the registration can be a milestone for the LGBTQIA+ sector, which is “several steps behind” in comparison to women —who are guaranteed a percentage of 30% of candidacies— and blacks —who have a proportional allocation of funds. of the electoral fund.

“First we have to get the data, to then outline the strategies in favor of effective gestures, but surely one way is that of affirmative actions, with reservation of a minimum percentage of candidacies or chairs and fair distribution of resources and advertising time “, she says.

The hypothesis of fighting for the creation of quotas is controversial even within militancy. Duda Salabert says that she has no opinion on the subject, but that affirmative policies are necessary.

“I believe that the answer is likely to go through some kind of mechanism to finance these campaigns, just as there is for gender and race, but we need to have the data to properly know the dimension of the problem and plan the best solutions”, says the deputy.

In practice, actions that benefit women and blacks already indirectly impact LGBTQIA+.

Of the 18 openly LGBTQIA+ candidacies elected in 2022 for Congress and Legislative Assemblies, 16 were women and 14 were black, which was not a coincidence, in the opinion of VoteLGBT, which carried out the survey. “It’s a positive side effect,” says Evorah.

According to the movement, founded in 2014, last year’s election had 325 candidates from the segment, a record. In the 2018 general elections, the number was less than half (157).