A competição eleitoral e a compra de votos nas eleições municipais da Paraíba.

Abstract

The democracies measurement methodology presented in poliarchy is very relevant theme in Political Science, with electoral competition being one of the parameters of this method. Democracy requires free and fair elections to fill elective positions, with the purchase of votes being a means of harming the polyarchy. This research intends to verify the relationship between vote buying and electoral competition in the municipalities of Paraíba, observing the conduct of those involved in vote buying cases and conducting an analysis of the performance of the Electoral Justice in the fight against electoral corruption. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data collected in legal proceedings on the illicit capture of suffrage with the TSE and TRE-PB, as well as the results of the municipal elections in the state of Paraíba from 2004 to 2016. The results point that in Paraíba, the mayors are more processed than the city councilors. The competition to the majoritarian office develops, most of the time, between 2 or 3 candidates, while in the proportional, usually, there are between 3 and 5 competitors for each chair. It was observed that the high competition to the mayor’s office is not necessarily linked to a high competition to the city councilor’s chairs. It was found that there is a low amount of convictions and a considerable delay in the judgement of the cases by the Electoral Justice, wich takes, in average, 634 days to definitely judge the demands about vote buying. It was noticed that the majority of the actions were distributed in citys with fierce electoral competition, regardless of the office in dispute. The research corroborates, even if partially, the idea that electoral competition can generate an unexpected effect in democratic regimes, serving the incertainty regarding the results of the contestants as incetive to wrongdoing.