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The president of Brazil's Federal Electoral Court (TSE), Minister Carlos Velloso, the secretary of informatics of the TSE, Paulo Camarão, and the president of the Brazilian Institute of Electoral Law, Torquato Jardim, participated, March 17, in the International Seminar on Electronic Voting: Challenges and Lessons for Election Observation, in Atlanta (US).
The encounter, sponsored by the Carter Center Foundation, seeks new strategies to help international agencies monitor elections around the world.
According to the TSE's press office, the Brazilians presented the system of electronic ballot boxes used in Brazil and spoke about its advantages in preventing fraud and accelerating the vote-counting process.
Just last year, a meeting held in Panama City, Panama, centered into the consolidation of the voting system in Brazil and the success achieved by Brazilian technology in other countries on the American continent.
Praised by presidents and delegates of Electoral Courts from all over South, North, and Central America, the Brazilian voting process was also the subject of a panel about "Applied Technology in Control and Supervision Procedures Exercised by Election Officials in Political Organizations."
One of the speakers was Minister Fernando Neves, rapporteur of instructions for last year's municipal elections, in which 120 million voters participated.
He informed that the success of elections in Brazil is basically due to technology. "Without the assistance of the informatized system, the computers, and the technical specialists, it would not be possible to carry out this task successfully, just as it would not be possible to hold elections in Brazil with the speed and security to which we are accustomed and which society demands nowadays," Neves pointed out.
With regard to campaign financing, the Minister said that it is up to the political parties to set spending limits for their candidates and that, once these limits have been communicated to the Electoral Courts, they can only be altered with the authorization of the electoral court officials.
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