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Compulsory Voting, Invalid Ballots, and Abstention in Brazil

This paper explores the determinants of invalid ballots and abstention in the world's largest electorate subject to compulsory voting. Previous analysts have seen blank and spoiled ballots either as an expression of po litical protest or as a product of the social structure. To these interpreta tions we add the hypothesis that invalid voting can be caused by institutional factors. In studying twelve legislative elections in Brazil be tween 1945 and 1990, we find that for each of three dependent variables considered (invalid votes for both houses of Congress, and noncompliant abstention), a model incorporating political, socioeconomic, and institu tional factors is more powerful than a model relying on any one of these alone. We also provide evidence that Brazil's unusual system of open-list proportional representation generates institutional features which serve as barriers impeding the effective incorporation of newly enfranchised voters. The extraordinarily high rates of invalid balloting in recent Brazilian elec tions point to the necessity of institutional reform in order to achieve democratic consolidation, with important implications for other new democracies.