One of the main brands of contemporary western democracies is the breadth of suffrage. It is no longer acceptable to restrict the right to vote based on education, income, property, religion, race or gender. In Brazil, the last barrier was surpassed in the 1980s, during the redemocratization, with the granting of the right to vote to the illiterate.
Long before that, the country already sought to ensure integrity and confidence in the electoral process. For this, it instituted, an authority independent of the elected powers, responsible for organizing the. One of his first functions was to take control of the voter registration, removing from local forces the power to decide who was able to vote. With this, the neutral application of legal criteria was ensured.
This model, based on a centralized and independent electoral authority, is adopted by many contemporary democracies. But not hair. Since the 1787 Constitution, that country adopts a profoundly decentralized federative logic – and this is reflected in the way it organizes its elections.
The American Constitution was vague about the right to vote, delegating its regulation to states. Only in the second half of the 19th century, almost a hundred years after its ratification, the 15th amendment was approved, prohibiting voting restrictions based on race, color or previous condition of. Then came amendments that guaranteed the vote to women (1920), banned the charge of voting fee (1964), and reduced the minimum age to 18 years (1971).
Recently, in the last week of March, the president signed an executive order that seeks to make the registration of voters in the country difficult – which, in practice, can restrict the exercise of voting rights. More serious: Order interferes with an area traditionally regulated by states and on which the president has no direct authority.
One of the most controversial points is the requirement for documentary proof of citizenship, with such a restricted list that, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice, would require the majority of Americans to present a passport-a document that, according to research from the same institute, only half of the population has.
Another worrying aspect is the attempt to subordinate to the Executive Power the Electoral Assistance Committee (EAC), an independent and bipartisan agency created in 2002 after the vote recount crisis in Florida. Composed of four commissioners nominated by both parties, their decisions are made by majority, necessarily requiring the support of the representatives of the two parties.
The decree also provides for the sharing of voter lists with the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), linked to – that arouses concerns about privacy and political use of data.
In seeking to impose demands that restrict access to vote, Trump threatens one of the pillars of American democracy. If implemented, it will be the first time a federal decision acts to restrict, not expand, the right to vote in the country – a worrying milestone in times of uncertainty about the future of democracy in the United States.
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