Elecção

Today, October 29, 2006, is Brazil’s elections for senators, governor and president. Voting is mandatory here from the age of 16. People I’ve talked to say that this allows for corruption—politicians buy votes from people who are willing to sell their vote. One source told me a family with three votes can get 300,000 R$ for promising to vote for so-and-so; that’s about $50 per vote.

Elections are done electronically, so voting ends at 5pm today and the results will be announced this evening. The president right now, since 2002, is Luis Inacio da Silva, who everybody calls “Lula.” He is the first president that Brazil has had from the labor party, which is significant in a country with such inequality and poverty. He’s done well, and is still well-loved by the people, though he has succumbed to some of the realities of living in a globalized capitalistic world and not entirely enacted his social promises. His challenger is Geraldo Alckmin, who’s running mainly on a platform of improving healthcare. The polls show Lula ahead by a fair margin.

I went with Sandra today to vote in an old school. The town has definitely been “agitated” this week. One time last week while we were downtown I noticed on one median people standing around with red flags for Zé, the labor party gubernatorial candidate. We went a ways down and around the corner, and there was a bunch of people with yellow flags for Cassio, the other candidate. I don’t know what they were doing, but it made me think—“Oh, of course-- this is the yellow club. Are they going to fight?” (No, of course not, it was just a peaceful flag-standing, but that would be pretty funny with all those flags.) The other night it was worse-- we could barely get to the video rental store because of the crowds expressing their fervor for one candidate or another. Today as we went to vote, Sandra was driving the motorcycle faster than ever and I was almost falling off a few times, because streets were already closing, people were already getting excited, and she knew it would just get worse. I think we’re in for a long night of firecrackers.

We’re safe and everything, don’t worry. Não tem problema. But it made me think what a pathetic contrast the U.S. is on election day. You barely notice it, except for a few “I voted” stickers as people come back to work. Does nobody care? Do we have no passion? Are our candidates really that boring, or is it just that we are so used to the democratic process that we take it for granted, and see nothing worth celebrating about the privilege to vote?