Free or Fair Elections? The Introduction of Electronic Voting in Brazil

This paper studies the phased-in introduction of electronic voting in Brazil to disentangle the effects of free and fair elections on politicians’ responsiveness to voters’ demands. The new technology improved voters’ access, particularly for less educated ones, to legislative elections, and it undercut the election fraud that had previously occurred with paper ballots during the vote count (that is, votes were added to tabulation sheets after voting had ended). At the same time, the new technology increased the relative appeal of voter fraud via ballot stuffing (that is, when voters illegally vote more than once). I find that municipalities using electronic rather than paper ballots experienced larger increases in the number of registered voters, suggesting an increase in ballot stuffing. I also find that enfranchisement biased toward low-income voters does not necessarily lead to an increase in public spending. Results suggest that election fairness is a complementary condition to guarantee electoral accountability.