It has been frequently remarked that Brazilian legislative elections are expensive, This week, the Economist says that what is true for federal seats is also true for vereador elections: elections for local municipal councils are also expensive, and it would seem in part for the same reasons. Here’s a good chunk of their article, with emphasis added for the apparent causes of high-spending:
Transparência, an NGO, has examined the last set of races in three state capitals (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte), which took place in 2004. Of 55 vereadores elected in São Paulo, 40 declared that they had spent more than 100,000 reais (then $35,000) on their races. One candidate spent over five times that amount. In Rio de Janeiro, some campaigns were even more expensive in terms of votes gathered per real spent. Certain successful candidates in the city spent more than $15 for each vote they won. (In comparison, George Bush spent $5.60 per vote he garnered in the American presidential election that year, and John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, $5.20 for each of his.) If undeclared spending were added, the sums would be even greater.
Why is it worth spending such sums just to become a member of a municipal council? In the big cities, the mayor controls a substantial budget. In smaller ones, money from the federal government, funnelled through the municipality, is often the mainstay of the local economy.
Until the Supreme Court banned the practice, states were able to create new municipalities almost at will. As a result, the number of places designated as cities grew by more than a thousand in a couple of years. Each new city brought its own administrative structure, which in turn provided new jobs and the right to tap federal funds. In such places, control of the local machine this time around may be vital in securing success in 2010, when the next presidential election will be held.
Although many candidates are no doubt motivated solely by public spiritedness, the moneymaking opportunities afforded to a vereador are also appealing. The combined salary and office expenses of a São Paulo vereador amount to 94,000 reais a month, making the job very well paid. Much of the office expenses seem to go on “consultancy”, which is particularly sought after in an election year. There is also the possibility of making some money on the side: a few years ago vereadores were found to be behind an organisation that extorted money from street vendors. Power over zoning makes vereadores of interest to property developers, who often provide campaign contributions too.
As is the case with deputies at both state and federal level, a sizeable proportion of vereadores have cases against them pending in either the electoral or the ordinary criminal courts. The municipalities also share two further afflictions with the two tiers of government above them. The first is party switching: 14 of Rio’s vereadores changed party after the last local elections. The second is the lack of electoral districts. A candidate standing in São Paulo, for example, must appeal to some 10m voters, rather than to a prescribed chunk of the city. Once elected, a vereador therefore lacks responsibility for any particular group of voters, further undermining his accountability.
The system is made even more unbalanced by a rule that allows candidates who get more votes than they need to win to transfer some of them to someone else on their party list. As a result, some vereadores are elected with very little support. The most popular vereador in the Rio election was voted in with 99,900 votes. Another candidate sneaked into the same chamber with a mere 6,800.
It is not hard to see how the political and financial influences as well as the moneymaking opportunities of the post lead candidates to spend lots of money. Less clear are the points about party switching, lack of electoral districts, and voting rules, but they are all somewhat related. At least, that is, if the electoral system used in local elections is essentially that which is used for federal legislative elections.
Basically, the system works as follows: for large electoral districts that elect many candidates each, parties run slates of candidates (and often they form electoral alliances to run large multiparty slates) and the number of seats won by each party (or alliance) is based on the combined vote of all candidates in the group. Then, if the party won X seats, they go to the X candidates with the most number of votes.
The consequences of this are several: (1) there is a proliferation of candidates because of the many seats available and because parties and alliances benefit from running as many candidates as possible, (2) because of this, successful candidates are those that have personal reputations that stand out, (3) building personal reputations often costs money either to advertise oneself or to engage in practices like vote buying (gift giving) that build personal loyalties with voters, (4) intraparty competition exacerbates #2 and thus #3 because candidates cannot attract personal votes simply by being a member of a particular party, (5) candidates engage in lots of party switching (in part) because of #2.
If this is correct, then it is not that party switching or large electoral districts or the fact that a strong candidate can help “pull” his/her copartisan weaklings that are to blame for spending, but instead the extreme proliferation of candidates and intraparty competition. Eliminating candidate-level voting – i.e., making it so that voters can only vote for party slates and not individual candidates in those slates (”closed” ranked lists of candidates) – and/or greatly reducing the number of seats per district would help in this regard.