Proceedings have been at a standstill in the Supreme Court since August 2023 and question the interpretation of “electoral surpluses”
The STF (Supreme Federal Court) should resume this Thursday (8.Feb.2024) the judgment on the “electoral leftovers”. The 3 actions judged by the Court could annul the election of 7 deputies with a change in the interpretation of the calculation of votes in the proportional system used to consider who is elected.
The action has been stopped since August 2023 due to a request from minister André Mendonça. The case was in the Court's virtual plenary session, where there is no debate between ministers. When returning the process, Mendonça highlighted that the action should be analyzed in plenary and the request was granted by the president of the STF, minister Roberto Barroso.
Only 3 ministers voted for the action and all were in favor of reviewing the electoral surplus, but 2 of them open a disagreement with the rapporteur, Ricardo Lewandowski, who retired in April 2023, in relation to the deadline for applying the rule.
Lewandowski voted to expand the participation of parties and candidates in the proportional election. He defends that the calculation considers all parties and candidates in the distribution of the remaining vacancies. The minister understood, however, that the change in interpretation must be applied following the Court's judgment.
Moraes and Gilmar defend that the application be applied to the 2022 electoral election. If the position is followed by the other ministers, the following deputies could lose their mandate, according to a survey by the Abradep (Brazilian Academy of Electoral and Political Law):
The trial has been drawing the attention of congressmen and there is an attempt by the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), to postpone the analysis. He would have made an informal request to the president of the Court to remove the actions from the agenda this Thursday (8.Feb). The request was not met by Barroso.
In a statement sent to the Court on January 30, the Lawyers of the Chamber of Deputies asked to speak in the physical plenary on the action.
According to the piece, the action could change the composition of the Chamber and this would cause changes in the functioning of the House and its bodies.
“Legal security also recommends that this House can speak out during the in-person trial of the case”says the demonstration.
UNDERSTAND
Three actions in the STF threaten to annul the election of 7 federal deputies by proposing a change in the interpretation of the calculation of votes in the proportional system to consider someone elected.
The actions were presented by the parties Rede Sustentabilidade, Podemos and Progressista. In these cases, calculations of “leftovers of leftovers” elections carried out by the TREs (Regional Electoral Courts) to determine which federal deputies were elected. The actions are judged simultaneously by the STF.
The calls “leftovers of electoral leftovers” are the votes distributed in a 3rd phase of counting, a kind of “electoral recap”.
O Power360 prepared a series of infographics on the topic. Read:
Electoral leftovers (Gallery – 5 Photos)
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RAPPORTEUR'S VOTE
The rapporteur of the case, minister Ricardo Lewandowski, opened the election by voting to expand the participation of parties and candidates so that all acronyms could be considered in the proportional election.
According to Lewandowski, the change in interpretation is not compatible with the “spirit of the constitutional text”, then “restricts political pluralism”.
“Any rule that aims to restrict the plurality of political parties, limiting the election of their representatives, notably in the proportional system, violates the foundations of our Democratic Rule of Law”, he stated. Here's the complete of Lewandowski’s vote (PDF – 104 kB).
For him, it is “unacceptable”in addition to demonstrating “contempt to vote”, the possibility of well-voted candidates being prohibited from entering the distribution of remaining seats if they run for election in parties that have not reached 80% of the electoral quotient.
“Under the current legislation, with the interpretation given by the TSE, the remaining vacancy could, in theory, be occupied by a parliamentarian who won only a thousand votes, to the detriment of a candidate who, in addition to having obtained 75 thousand votes, ran for a group [um partido] which did not reach 80,000 votes”he said.
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