TSE seeks to prevent fraud in racial self-declaration – 01/24/2024 – Power

The TSE (Superior Electoral Court) received this Wednesday (24), in a public hearing, suggestions for improving the rules that will be applied to this year’s municipal elections. Among the proposals, measures were presented to prevent possible fraud when filling out the self-declaration of candidates running in the elections.

At the hearing, the minutes dealing with candidature registration, special funding fund for candidatures and accountability were discussed.

The court had already released a draft with proposed changes to some of the rules. Among them, restricting the change in self-declaration of candidates from one election to the next.

According to the document, whoever did so would have to justify themselves to the TSE. The measure would apply to anyone changing their registration to black or mixed race.

“If black or brown color is declared in the candidacy registration in disagreement with information in the Electoral Register or with a previous registration request, the candidate and the party, federation or coalition will be notified to confirm the change in the declaration racial”, says the draft.

The measure aims to prevent changes in registration and possible undue transfers of funds reserved for black candidates.

The draft also says that if it is found that “there was an error in the racial declaration, or if the deadline passes without a manifestation, the information on color or race will be adjusted to reflect the data contained in the Electoral Register or previous candidacy registration”.

In this case, the transfer of public resources reserved for black candidates will be prohibited.

During the public hearing, some proposals related to the topic were presented.

Sidney Sá das Neves, from the Federal Council of the OAB, suggested that parties implement hetero-identification commissions so that they can assess the candidate’s self-declaration with more objective criteria.

“Precisely for the purpose of avoiding what was called Afro-convenience. In this last election, we came across candidates declaring themselves [negro] understanding that an ancestor, an ancestry, was a black person, and the person does not have a black person phenotype”, he said.

She also suggested another punitive measure to curb fraud. “Even if there is a rectification of this fraudulent data, inserted in this candidacy register, the false information released would not rule out possible electoral offenses or even criminal offenses. I think the warning speaks very strongly and says a lot”, he said.

Marcos Andre de Paula, from Anan (National Association of Black Advocacy) also suggested that candidates go through a hetero-identification panel.

“We black people are not silent, we are silenced, and every time fraud is admitted to the system that should, as a rule, correct this social distortion and the lack of representation of our people in positions of power, especially those destined for voting and approval of public policies and the reduction, obviously, of inequalities, worsens this situation even further”, he said.

According to him, the phenotypes differ from the self-declaration made by the candidate himself, which, “for reasons of lack of racial literacy or other issues, ends up not representing reliability.”

“If he doesn’t have the phenotypic characteristics to fit into a certain social group, black or brown, obviously, he doesn’t suffer the ills of being black in a racist country like ours,” he said.

He concludes by saying that fraud also has a relevant impact on the system of distributing funds for black candidates and that the parties would be circumventing the rule in some way.

In the last elections, some measures were approved to encourage and thus increase the participation of black people in electoral disputes.

In 2021, for example, the TSE approved a resolution that established rules for the distribution of electoral fund resources. The parties must now distribute the money for campaign financing proportionally to black and white candidates, taking into account the number of candidates in each party.

Another action approved was that, since the last election, votes given to female candidates or black candidates are counted twice when defining the values ​​of the party fund and the electoral fund distributed to political parties. The measure is valid until 2030.

The TSE considers the sum of brown or black candidates as black, and uses self-declaration in the candidacy registration as a criterion.

A survey carried out by Sheet for the 2022 elections, it was noted that 1,342 candidates — considering all the positions in dispute — changed their racial self-declaration in their candidacy application, in relation to the one they had presented in the 2018 election.

This represented 21.1% of those who ran in 2018 and ran again in 2022. The most frequent change was from white to brown (549).

According to another survey carried out by Sheet, following the results of the elections, 19 deputies who were re-elected changed their self-declaration from white to brown. Like, for example, parliamentarians Alexandre Leite (União-SP), Elmar Nascimento (União Brasil-BA) and Félix Mendonça Júnior (PDT-BA).

Another politician who also changed his candidacy registration was Flávio Dino, now minister of the STF. When he ran in the elections for governor of Maranhão, he changed his self-declaration from white, in 2014, to brown, in 2018.