Eleições Limpas: automatic signature validation against the TSE

Context

A popular-initiative bill in Brazil needs signatures collected on paper and verified by hand, at a scale that has defeated almost every attempt. Eleições Limpas, from the same people behind the Ficha Limpa law, set out to gather them for a package of proposals to reduce electoral corruption.

Problem

Hand-checking signatures is where these campaigns die. A form filled in wrong is discovered months later, during verification, and by then the signer is gone and the record cannot be fixed.

Approach

Eleições Limpas validated the data a signer entered automatically against the TSE at the moment of signing. The base was mobilised through social media, which turned thousands of volunteers across the country into distributed collectors. I took part as technology coordinator through the IBPT, and as strategic adviser on communication and IT for Instituto Atuação.

Non-obvious decisions

• Validate at the point of entry rather than at the point of counting. Rejecting a bad record while the signer is still on the page is the only correction that costs nothing.
• Treat mobilisation as part of the product. The tool was designed for thousands of volunteer collectors rather than for a central team, so the real constraint was other people's devices and other people's patience.

Outcome

The campaign set a target of 1.6 million signatures and became the first popular-initiative tool in Brazil to validate signer data automatically against the TSE, mobilising thousands of collectors nationwide through social media.