The CCJ (Constitution and Justice Commission) of postponed again on Wednesday (9) the vote of the text approved by the House in 2021 and which had been stopped for four years.
The decision was made for disagreement and pressure from the pocket bench, which is against various points of the text and which presented amendment to implement the printed vote in the country. No voting deadline has been established.
The project as a whole has 877 articles and revokes all electoral legislation in order to institute a single code. The proposal has the formal objective of modernizing and simplifying the rules, but brings several points that.
The theme of the printed vote is the object of an amendment by Senator Esperidião Amin (PP-SC) and is supported by pockets.
“The problem is not the ballot box, it is the man. And this stubbornness, this surreal resistance to do something that is very simple by technology, only increases distrust. Why keep feeding this distrust?” Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ), the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
“This won’t end for strength. ‘Look, whoever talks badly about the ballot box, jail.’ It has a considerable portion of the population that suspects not the ballot box but of those who program the ballot box. “
Printed vote is one of the main flags of pockets and is part of a caudal list of alleged fraud in the electronic ballot box, which has never been tasted so far.
The theme has already been voted in the House in 2021, during Bolsonaro management ,. The Supreme Court (STF) has also considered the unconstitutional measure on the grounds that it is a threat to the confidentiality of voters’ vote.
Rapporteur of, Senator Marcelo Castro (MDB-PI) had already given pressure from parliamentarians linked to the former president and softened the proposal to establish in the legislation punishing fake news against candidates and against the electoral process.
By the previous text, it is subject to a penalty of 1 to 4 years, increased in some cases, who disclosed in the electoral propaganda known to be untrue against adversaries or that result in embarrassment, “discouragement to the exercise of vote and delegitimation of the electoral process.”
Castro inserted a newsroom saying he does not configure a crime “the mere criticism or opinion about the electoral service and the process of voting, calculation and totalization of votes”. The change, however, did not soften the rejection of this block.
Allies of the former president are also against the quarantine of two years for magistrates, members of the prosecutor, police and military apply. Castro signaled that he should give in to this point as well.
Senator Laércio Oliveira (PP-SE) was amended by establishing the return of business funding of the campaigns-prohibited since 2015-but the rapporteur rejected the proposal. The theme can be incorporated into the text, but if there is a majority support from the senators.
It also addresses an old theme of interest to parliamentarians: electoral polls.
The project approved by the House in 2021, under the leadership of Arthur Lira (PP-AL), established censorship of the dissemination of research on the eve and on the day of the election and the requirement of publication by the institutes of a “reckoning fee” of past.
The current Senate report withdrew censorship and changed the idea of fee for another “reliability indicator.”
Castro withdrew from the project some of the points criticized by electoral transparency entities, among them which allowed Congress to overthrow TSE decisions and what released the parties to use party fund money for virtually any purpose.
He kept, however, other controversial points.
Among them is the one that eliminated the standardization of the presentation and dissemination of party accounts, the SPCA (), and what limits the performance of the Electoral Justice to a mere checking of formal aspects of the benefits (accounting errors, for example), excluding the possibility of investigating irregularities such as overpricing and diversion of public campaign resources.
Public resources are currently the main source of party funding and candidates, totaling more than $ 6 billion with each dispute.
The part of the text of the chamber maintained by Castro also decreases the current deadlines for ineligibility.
The text approved by the House in 2021 limits the ineligibility to up to eight years, establishing that its beginning is the date of the court decision. Today, the eight years of ineligibility begins to count from the end of the execution of the imposed penalty or the mandate to which the politician was elected, which in practice gives more than eight years.
Senators argue to reduce the period even more, with ineligibility counting from the fact that generates the conviction.
The project also deals with artificial intelligence (determining clear information about use, for example) in the elections and also determines a quota of women for the legislature: a minimum of 20% of chairs. The percentage is what is currently in the Senate (20% of women) and slightly higher than the House (18%).
To take effect in time for the 2026 elections, the proposal needs to be approved by Congress by September this year.
Castro was also the project rapporteur. Approved by the CCJ, he is ready for voting in plenary, but has lost traction due to disagreements about the proposal.
