Brazil's electoral courts have barred more than 1,200 candidacies in this year's general elections through Tuesday night, according to Superior Electoral Court (TSE) data compiled by g1, Globo's news portal. Of the total, 888 registrations are under appeal and 326 have been definitively rejected.
The rejections concentrate in races decided by proportional representation, in which parties win legislative seats based on vote totals. The g1 count lists 561 barred candidacies for state deputy and 494 for federal deputy, followed by Senate substitutes (73), senators (31), governors (24), lieutenant governors (19), district deputies (9) and one presidential candidate.
Clean Record law drives the high-profile cases
The best-known case is that of presidential candidate Pablo Marçal (PRTB), whose registration the TSE denied on Friday under the Clean Record law (Lei da Ficha Limpa), the statute that blocks candidacies of people convicted of certain crimes. The court found he had not proven he joined his party within the legal deadline and recorded that he is ineligible until 2032 because of a conviction tied to prize offers in video-trimming contests during the 2024 election, according to Congresso em Foco. Marçal quit the race on Monday, and the PRTB picked his former running mate, Leonardo Avalanche, to head the ticket.
Regional electoral courts (TREs) also rejected the candidacies of Anthony Garotinho (Republicanos), who is running for governor of Rio de Janeiro, José Roberto Arruda (PSD), a candidate for governor of the Federal District, and Eduardo Cunha (Republicanos), a candidate for federal deputy in Minas Gerais. On Tuesday, the electoral court of Minas Gerais unanimously threw out the latest appeal by Cunha, a former House speaker, and held that he remains ineligible until February 2027 because Congress stripped his mandate in 2016 for violating parliamentary decorum. His lawyers argue the Clean Record law passed in 2025 now counts the eight-year ban from the date of the removal, which would make him eligible.
"Tomorrow I will file the appeal with the TSE, where the matter will be examined for real, and this absurdity of a regional court declaring a law unconstitutional will surely be reversed," Cunha said in a statement quoted by radio station Itatiaia.
Why candidacies fall
Paperwork failures top the list of reasons: 412 rejections for missing formal requirements, 365 for lacking eligibility conditions and 314 for denial of the party slate registration that formalizes candidacies at the TSE. One candidacy can carry more than one reason, so the sum exceeds the total. Among parties, DC (185), Democrata (154), Agir (144) and Mobiliza (134) account for 617 rejections, just over half the cases; PSOL (45) and PSDB (42) also appear on the list, according to g1. Piauí has the highest share of barred candidacies, 20.9%, followed by São Paulo with 12.9%.
Candidates whose registrations are still under appeal can campaign, appear in the free electoral broadcast and keep their names on the ballot, but the votes only count if the case ends in their favor, according to Congresso em Foco. Its own check of the TSE panel on Wednesday counted 1,138 rejections, 829 of them under appeal, with 205 registrations still awaiting judgment. The numbers shift with the moment of the query.
The first round is set for October 4. Before then, the TSE must rule on the pending appeals, including those of Garotinho, Arruda and Cunha. Their cases turn on Clean Record rules changed in 2025, whose validity the Supreme Federal Court is still reviewing.