Municipal elections characterized by 10% increase in number of city council posts (“vereadores”)

A constitutional amendment (“Emenda Constitutional 58”) approved by Congress in September 2009 has modified the formula used to calculate the number of seats in municipal legislatures. Under the new rules,  Brazil’s 5,564 municipalities can have between nine and fifty-five members in their legislative bodies, depending on their size. Municipalities with up to 15,000 inhabitants can have nine representatives (“vereadores”) and municipalities with over 8 million inhabitants can have a maximum of 55 vereadores.

As a result of the new rules, five municipalities lost seats while 1,695 will have more. In all, there will 10.4% more seats, a total of 5,390 additional vereadores.

 According to the National Confederation of Municipals (“CNM”), the total number of seats for vereador in the country is now 57,434 and this year there are 432,867 candidates running to occupy them. Most of the candidates are men, 296,810, while 136,057 are women (31.5%).

The state with the most candidates for seats in municipal legislatures is São Paulo: 75,160, followed closely by Minas Gerais with 67,865. The state with the smallest number of candidates is Roraima: 1,508.