Brazil | Municipal elections underway in the country
TeleSUR correspondent Brian Mier reports on the local elections in Brazil, in which voters will choose Mayors, Vice Mayors and Councillors in all 5,569 municipalities.
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00:00For more details on Brazil's local election day, we go with our correspondent Bram Meir.
00:05Let's listen.
00:07Today is local election day in Brazil.
00:10And in all 5,569 municipalities,
00:14millions of people are coming out to the polls to choose their next mayors, vice mayors,
00:19and over 50,000 city councilors.
00:23So far today, voters have been trickling in and out of the voting center that I'm in,
00:28in Recife, in the Casa Forte neighborhood.
00:31There were big lines before the polls opened at 8 a.m.
00:34Since then, since the lunch hours hit, things are beginning to trickle down a little bit.
00:38This is a tendency that happens all over the world in elections.
00:42There have been isolated cases of corruption and political violence across the country.
00:49Police announced that they've arrested 77 people,
00:53many of them involved in vote-buying schemes.
00:57In Rio de Janeiro, a group of men were apprehended with 62,000 reais and firearms,
01:03trying to influence the elections in Nilopolis.
01:06In all, police say they've seized over 9 million reais a day
01:10in money that was decent to purchase votes, mainly in smaller cities.
01:15It's an old tradition in Brazil.
01:17It used to be much more widespread when I first moved here in 1991.
01:21Things have been improving, but it's still a problem in many places.
01:25Now, across the country, some races are really heating up.
01:29In some cases, like in Rio de Janeiro, incumbent Eduardo Paes is expected to win in the first round.
01:35All cities over 200,000 go to a second round if no candidate gets over 50% of the vote.
01:42And that seems to be the case that's brewing up in the largest city in the country,
01:47São Paulo, where the three main candidates, two far-right reactionaries,
01:52including incumbent mayor Ricardo Nunes and a former YouTube coach
01:57who's very popular named Pablo Marçal,
02:00are in a statistical tie with housing movement leader from the PSOL party, Guilherme Boulos.
02:08That race is supposed to go to the second term.
02:11And in thousands of other races across the country,
02:15they're going to find out by the end of the night who their next mayor is here in Brazil.