Not last Sunday (24th), a Sheet published, prominently on the cover of the printed version, , under the argument that this expedient would compromise the legitimacy and transparency of the Legislature.
As I discussed in this space in , political science has already identified mechanisms that “busy” legislatures, with a high demand for topics to be discussed and voted on, use to organize legislative work and optimize scarce time. Symbolic voting, also called “unrecorded collective vote”, “voice vote” or “signal vote”, is one of them. The unequal distribution of speaking time between party leaders and ordinary deputies is another.
Symbolic voting tends to be the standard method of deliberation to speed up the legislative process when there is political consensus, generally resulting from agreements between party leaders and the presidency of the House. This is a mechanism widely used in democracies with professionalized legislatures, such as the American Congress and the British Parliament.
Roll-call votes are reserved for specific situations, when the project under consideration requires a qualified majority for approval, such as PECs, complementary bills and cases of revocation of mandate or when there is a request for vote verification. If the request comes from party leaders representing at least 6% of the members of the House, the president must open the roll call vote.
Successive requests for roll call votes are also a known form of obstruction. Therefore, the internal regulations provide for a one-hour interval between one check and the next. Breaking this interval depends on the plenary and can be made possible by agreement between leaders. In the Collor government, the trick was to ask for a roll call vote on minor matters to put more politically important votes to a symbolic vote the next hour.
Far from being an instrument of opacity, symbolic voting signals consensus. The real problem of legitimacy and transparency is another: the hybrid voting system, which in practice eliminates the quorum requirement – a requirement maintained in cases of symbolic votes carried out in person.
Piauí magazine reports cases of deputies who used the hybrid system to . These deputies were not participating in the plenary session or following the discussions. If this becomes commonplace, it is worth questioning the allocation of R$8 billion to the Chamber’s funding in 2026 alone. The problem worsens because it is not possible to easily identify, from the area of the House’s website where the progress of bills is monitored, whether a vote took place in person or remotely.
The worst-case scenario materialized on May 19, when the indefensible project, sold as a “mini-electoral reform”, was approved in a remote and symbolic vote. The regimental formula is simple: favorable deputies are invited to remain as they are. In the remote model, however, only the Table, or God, may be able to say who, in fact, was as he was.
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