Brazil - Personal Essay

Brazil is a country with an open list proportional representation system, and a popularly elected president, and I’ve taken that for granted all my life. There are almost 30 distinct major political parties in Brazil (meaning, those who meet the percentage threshold required to attain seats in government), all with differing political views and policy preferences, ranging from liberal to conservative, communist to capitalist, and several in between.

My family has been in the business of soy production for as long as I can remember, and as a result, they (and me included) have always been pro-capitalist kind of people. although I’ve never been able to settle with the fact that so few can have so much and so many can have so little, as I grew up, through the news, I saw in my country (over time off course) positive change with my very eyes, all thanks to proportional representation. This multi-party system allowed the minorities (both cultural, and social) to have a voice, and it makes me proud today to see that Brazil is one of the countries with the largest middle class in the world.

some parties larger than others. However, The way our election process works is very unique in a sense that even the parties that don’t necessarily get their candidates elected still have a voice. How? It’s actually very simple.

Like other proportional representation countries, Brazil has a threshold, meaning a party needs a certain % of votes in relation to the total amount of people who voted that year. For a regular state representative, that number is usually 200,000, give or take. Now, the key difference at this point is that in Brazil, because there are so many parties and a lot less number of seats, different parties form coalitions with each other, agreeing to share their votes in unison, in order to elect the most amount of people they can.

Let’s say there are 2 small parties, each with only 2 strong candidates