Evidence of Fraud in Brazil's Electoral Campaigns Via the Benford's Law

TL;DR

This paper investigates Brazilian electoral campaign data, revealing that money heavily influences election outcomes and providing statistical evidence of potential fraud in declared donations using Benford's Law.

Contribution

It applies Benford's Law to electoral donation data, uncovering signs of fraud and highlighting the dominance of money over representativeness in Brazilian elections.

Findings

Money significantly affects candidate election outcomes

Benford's Law indicates possible fraud in donation declarations

Brazil's government system is characterized as chrimatocracy

Abstract

The principle of democracy is that the people govern through elected representatives. Therefore, a democracy is healthy as long as the elected politicians do represent the people. We have analyzed data from the Brazilian electoral court (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral, TSE) concerning money donations for the electoral campaigns and the election results. Our work points to two disturbing conclusions: money is a determining factor on whether a candidate is elected or not (as opposed to representativeness); secondly, the use of Benford's Law to analyze the declared donations received by the parties and electoral campaigns shows evidence of fraud in the declarations. A better term to define Brazil's government system is what we define as chrimatocracy (govern by money).