Strategies From the US and Brazil

Illustration by Helena Pallarés

At the core of healthy democracies are free, fair, and trusted elections. Precisely for that reason, corrupting elections is one of the core tactics employed by authoritarian leaders around the world. Whether the perpetrator is Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, or Donald Trump in the United States, 21st-century authoritarians maintain the facade of democratic elections while simultaneously tilting the playing field by suppressing voting rights, manipulating electoral rules, and even attempting to overturn valid election results. Accordingly, protecting the integrity of elections and the electoral process is a key reason for vigilance for democracy movements around the world.

As leaders of pro-democracy coalitions and organizations in Brazil and the United States, we have examined the parallels between the recent political and electoral trajectories of these two established democracies to help us understand how strategies to promote trusted elections and electoral systems can succeed. Since the rise of Donald Trump in 2016 and Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, it is not an exaggeration to suggest that Brazil might be following the same path as the United States—only two years behind. Both Trump and Bolsanaro came to power adhering to the authoritarian playbook. Both were elected democratically in deeply polarized societies and exploited popular anti-system sentiment to politicize independent institutions and aggrandize their own personal power. They soon attacked that very electoral system that brought them into power, conducted extensive and systematic disinformation campaigns, and sought to delegitimize the media and minority communities. In spite of their setbacks at the ballot box, Trump—and Bolsonaro through the authoritarian movement he spawned—are promising to take their authoritarian tactics even further.

As democracies continue to be threatened worldwide and authoritarians target elections and undermine their legitimacy, we must look to actively implement strategies to promote free, fair, and trusted elections. Looking at recent efforts from Brazil and the United States, we have identified three main strategies:

1. Building broad-based coalitions that defend the democratic system and the integrity of elections;
2. Investing in structural reform efforts to improve electoral systems; and
3. Holding individuals and organizations who discredit elections accountable.

Strategy #1: Building Broad-Based Coalitions to Defend the Democratic System and the Integrity of Elections

Building, strengthening, enhancing, and defending democracy is, by its essence, a collective endeavor. Democracies are a pact—a commitment established among social and political actors regarding the rules and values that guide our societal construction. In other words, the existence of democracies is intrinsically dependent on the will of a multitude of actors to maintain, nurture, and respect this agreement. Accordingly, we can only defend and strengthen democracy collectively, through coalitions that are willing to set aside their differences and act together to prevent this pact from falling apart.

One of the most important tactics in defeating the authoritarian threat posed by Trump in 2020 was a broad-based pro-democracy coalition that—despite differences in policies and politics—was united in supporting a candidate who believed in the rule of law and democratic principles. In the lead-up to, and after, the 2020 election, an alliance between left-wing activists, business titans, labor unions, “Never Trump” Republicans, and good-government nonprofits came together to oppose Trump’s assault on democracy, to protect the integrity of the elections, and to mitigate the threat of political violence.

In particular, the pro-democracy coalition served an important vigilance and responsive function during the election. In 2020, this included: (1) updating election infrastructure to have safe and fair elections in the midst of a global pandemic, both through litigation and advocacy for proper funding; (2) establishing cross-ideological bodies—like the National Task Force on Election Crisis, a body of the nation’s leading election, voting, and media experts created by Protect Democracy—to fact-check false claims, to educate key state and federal election officials and elected leaders, and to brief media organizations on potential crises; and (3) counteracting disinformation efforts to discredit the election results and ensuring a peaceful transfer of power after Election Day.

Having studied the critical importance of forming broad-based coalitions in the US context, advocates enacted their own version in Brazil. At the political level, a diverse coalition of political leaders, multiple political parties, and diverse sectors across civil society joined with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula)—including those who had previously criticized him and even supported his imprisonment in 2018—in order to defeat the authoritarian candidate. Within civil society, too, Pacto pela Democracia, a nonprofit that brings together over 200 organizations to defend and reinvigorate democracy, orchestrated a multi-sector strategy for monitoring and crafting rapid, assertive responses to threats and attacks on the elections.

Pacto pela Democracia’s efforts culminated in the “Civic Vigil,” an effort that brought together 35 civil society organizations and gathered 120 people in person (at the Brazil Bar Association) and many more virtually into 15 organized work fronts to monitor and respond jointly and in real time to threats to electoral integrity. Drawing partially from the US experience, in Brazil the focus was on three critical election phases: (1) ensuring voter safety, access to polling stations, monitoring misinformation on social media and messaging apps, and observing public security forces; (2) overseeing the vote-counting process; and (3) activating prominent voices from civil society, political leadership, the international community, and the private sector to promptly recognize the results upon their announcement. This successful initiative showed the vital role coalitions play in safeguarding democratic elections and how anticipating risks, coordinating strategies, and collaborating in a multi-stakeholder effort are key to protecting electoral processes under undemocratic attacks.

Empirical analysis validates the coalition-based approach that was used with great success in the United States in 2020 and in Brazil in 2022. A 2024 study analyzing 80 elections worldwide found that coalitions meaningfully increased the chances of defeating an authoritarian candidate. This analysis was recently validated again in Poland, where a coalition of left and centrist parties finally broke the authoritarian-nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party’s control of government. As in Poland and Brazil, democracy supporters in the United States hope to stay united through the 2024 election. But doing just that will not be enough, nor will it constitute a full understanding of why the pro-democracy coalition was successful in 2022 in Brazil.

Strategy #2: Investing in Structural Reform Efforts to Improve Electoral Systems

Beyond exigent efforts to protect voting rights and election integrity are electoral systems. Akin to software running in the background of our democracies, electoral systems—how votes are translated into legislative seats—are responsible for structuring incentives and outcomes. And the implications for these electoral design choices, especially in the current context of democratic erosion, are far greater than the attention they receive.

In comparing the United States and Brazil, the structures of their electoral systems were instrumental in shaping each country’s response to the democratic disruption that both countries experienced. While Brazil’s pro-democracy movement was buoyed by the country’s use of a proportional electoral system, US efforts were made more difficult by its use of a winner-take-all system. The United States stands out among the world’s democracies for the way it conducts its legislative elections. Congressional and state legislative elections in the United States employ a winner-take-all model, where multiple candidates run and only one wins, often with only a plurality of the vote. But this is not the way most democracies operate, including Brazil. Most democracies instead use proportional representation, where rather than electing one person, each district gets multiple representatives—each elected in proportion to how many voters vote for them. In other words, with multiple winners per district, the number of seats a party gets depends on how many votes they receive.

Why does this matter? Winner-take-all elections are associated with a variety of maladies, but most relevant here are: escalating polarization, political violence, and extremism. By contrast, proportional systems tend to create space for more parties—and more opportunities for fluid coalition-building across them—that are associated with less dangerous degrees of polarization and tend to be at a lesser risk of political violence. Moreover, across the world, winner-take-all systems almost always lead to a two-party system, which can structure political conflict as an existential “us-versus-them” battle. This is especially true in the United States, where Protect Democracy’s recent report—Advantaging Authoritarianism—found that winner-take-all elections for the House of Representatives have fueled anti-democratic extremism, diluted minority voting power, and prevented an electorally viable new center-right party from developing to check the Trump-led authoritarian faction.

Although Brazil has not been immune to political polarization and political violence, it has been more equipped to combat the authoritarian threat than the United States—thanks in part to the country’s multi-party electoral system. Brazil employs an open-list proportional representation system to elect the Chamber of Deputies and for state and municipal legislative bodies, which has been instrumental in the country’s democratic resilience. Unlike the United States, which has only two effective parties (using the “effective number of parties” measure utilized by political analysts), Brazil’s electoral system produces 9.91 effective parties. This multi-party system allows for more cross-partisan coalitions to solve political problems and extremist governance.

One critique might be that this multi-party system leads to a fragmented government. But the ability of governing coalitions to reconstitute and rearrange is actually a feature—rather than a bug—when it comes to democratic health. Autocrats need allies and they are especially reliant on political leaders for support and protection. The coalitional fluidity of Brazil’s party system ensures that these crucial alliances are never guaranteed. Thus, Brazilian political leaders who once sided with Bolsonaro could distance themselves from him and create new alliances according to the new political landscape resulting from the 2022 elections—something that is unthinkable in the US context, where there are only two major political parties and one of them has been taken over by an authoritarian faction.

If the United States is able to follow Brazil in defeating the authoritarian threat in 2024, it must next turn its attention to changing the structures of its system that elevated the authoritarian faction in the first place.

Strategy #3: Holding Individuals and Organizations Who Discredit Elections Accountable

Finally, we need to ensure that those who discredit elections are publicly and legally held accountable. As Protect Democracy wrote in a report after Trump left office, accountability can help prevent a repeat of past transactions, including by: rebuilding public trust in the rule of law and public institutions; preventing unaddressed grievances from being exploited to justify future transgressions; and ensuring wrongdoers are not reputationally rehabilitated or established as the “new normal.”

In Brazil, a national, independent Supreme Electoral Court is responsible for all matters related to elections. While US elections are conducted by states with a patchwork of different rules, Brazil has a centralized institution responsible for conducting elections, including vote counting and announcing results. The Superior Electoral Court (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral) is key to promoting more independent, impartial, transparent, fair, secure, and efficient electoral processes in Brazil. Having a single institution responsible for coordinating elections nationwide guarantees the standardization of procedures and centralization of decisions. This structure also allows greater technical expertise and an enhanced capacity to address complex and specific electoral issues, as well as to permanently implement innovations in the voting system. Furthermore, the Superior Electoral Court’s impartiality—being independent from the government and political parties—is crucial for maintaining fair and secure elections. Recently, this very court concluded that Bolsonaro violated Brazi’s election law when “he called diplomats to the presidential palace and made baseless claims that the nation’s voting systems were likely to be rigged against him.” As a result, Bolsonaro is barred from running for elections in Brazil until 2030.

This contrasts starkly with the lack of meaningful accountability for Trump in the American system. While Brazil acted promptly and imposed accountability when it faced its own version of the January 6, 2021 insurrection on January 8, 2023, the US system has been less vigorous. Although hundreds of participants in the January 6 insurrection have been brought to justice, Trump has thus far eluded serious consequences. Moreover, Trump’s eligibility to be reelected as president in November 2024 provides a pathway for him to permanently absolve himself of any responsibility, as well pardon every single person involved in the events at the Capitol that day. In comparison, Brazil’s ongoing accountability measures—which include the indictment of 61 individuals, including former President Bolsonaro, five of his former ministers, and several advisors following the conclusion of the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission conducted by the Brazilian National Congress—evinces a fastidiousness that has been lacking in the US context.

Conclusion

Brazil and the United States have not been immune from the authoritarian threat that has swept the world. Both countries had an authoritarian faction come into power, yet both were able to successfully oust that faction in the next election. Use of broad-based coalitions unlocked powerful movements that were able to stop the authoritarian playbook—including efforts to corrupt elections and spread disinformation. Yet structural differences in each country mean that the pro-democracy movements are operating on different playing fields. If the United States is able to weather the 2024 political storm, it must seek to make its democracy more representative and responsive by replacing its winner-take-all electoral system with one that is more proportional. Finally, accountability matters. Without accountability mechanisms that construct a full record of wrongdoing, generate deterrence through consequences for wrongdoing, and rebuild prescriptive norms of political behavior, authoritarian actors who have sought to corrupt elections can rise to power once again.

The authoritarian threats facing Brazil and the United States have meaningfully distinguishing characteristics. Yet, lessons from the pro-democracy movements in both countries suggest that both short-term defense and long-term structural investments must be supported to ensure truly free, fair, and trusted elections.

Read more stories by Farbod Faraji & Flávia Pellegrino.