Brazil’s Municipal Elections: How They Work and What They Mean

RIBEIRÃO PRETO, SP – Brazil has 5,570 municipalities, spread around 26 states. [The Federal District has no municipalities, only administrative divisions.] In thousands of cities and towns, some 33 political parties have now begun holdings conventions to choose their candidates for the November elections.

Municipal elections are held every four years, in the two-year intervals between state and federal elections. All elected municipal officials take office on January 1st and serve four-year terms.

In 2020, the first round of elections – delayed because of the pandemic – will be held Sunday, November 15^th; the second round, where necessary (see below) will be two Sundays later, November 29^th.

Voters in every municipality will choose a slate of Mayor/Vice-Mayor, as well as a number of city councilors, called “Vereadores”. Article 29 of the Federal Constitution specifies the upper limit of councilors a city can have, proportional to its population. The lowest ceiling is 9 (for municipalities with populations under 15,000), the maximum is 55 (São Paulo); Rio de Janeiro now has 51.

Candidates for council seats are chosen from lists submitted to the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) by registered political parties, after decisions taken at municipal party conventions, which are held between August 31^st and September 16th – this year most conventions will be virtual rather than in-person.

Thirty-three (33) registered parties can field candidates in November. Each party can list candidates up to 1½ times the available council seats, meaning 13 candidates for councils with 9 seats and 82 for São Paulo’s 55 places. Only a few major parties list as many candidates as they can.

Estimates of the number of candidates for mayor and city council this year vary from 500,000 to 700,000. In the 2016 elections, there were 480,000 office-seekers, but parties could then form coalitions for council seats; now they cannot. In any event, the November contests will choose at least 70,000 new (or repeating) officials

Voters cast an [electronic] vote for mayor, and then vote for one council candidate, or for one party. [There are no absentee or mail-in ballots.] After the elections, seats in city councils are allocated in proportion to each party’s share of the total votes, not simply the votes of individual candidates. The party list/electoral quotient rules are far too complex to explain briefly here.

Votes for mayor are determined by a simpler system, commonly known in English-speaking jurisdictions as “first past the post”. In almost all of Brazil’s municipalities, whichever mayoralty slate wins the most votes is elected, even if it did not garner a majority of the total valid votes. [Parties can, and usually do, form coalitions for mayoralty races, so slates often have a vice-mayor from a different party than the mayor.]

In 95 Brazilian cities – those having more than 200,000 registered voters – the mayoralty elections use a nuanced variation of the system: that which is used for gubernatorial and presidential elections, consisting of two rounds of votes.

In the first round, any mayoral candidate receiving 50%+1 of all valid votes is the winner. If no candidate achieves that majority, there is a second round, between the two candidates having the most first-round votes. In this run-off round, it’s back to “first past the post” – the most-voted candidate wins.

The 2020 municipal elections are potentially crucial for Brazil’s smallest political parties. Under the 2017 Electoral Reform, the number of votes each party receives in federal legislative elections determines whether it can receive any government funding, which is essential after the Supreme Court banned political contributions from companies.

Federal and state legislative elections are statewide; there are no smaller election districts. Because of this, many of the smaller parties depend upon electing a goodly number of mayors and city councilors in as many states as possible this year, so as to improve their chances for success, or even survival, in 2022.