⏪ Rewriting electoral history

CONGRESS

Supreme Court close to rewriting the 2022 election

Members of Brazil’s Supreme Court have reached a majority to retroactively apply a new interpretation of how lower house seats are allocated — altering the 2022 election results and removing seven sitting lawmakers from office. The decision is set to dismiss an appeal filed by the House, which had sought to preserve its existing composition.

The case revolves around how the country calculates its “leftover votes,” a technical byproduct of Brazil’s complex proportional representation system. The process of electing federal House members in Brazil involves several steps, which boil down to:

1. Discarding spoiled ballots: Only votes for candidates or parties count. Blank or spoiled votes are completely disregarded.

2. Calculating the electoral threshold …

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