The minister Dias Toffoli of Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE), the country's top electoral authority, suspended the digital election campaign of Renan Santos, the Missão party's presidential candidate. The order was signed on Sunday (30) and made public on Monday (31). Beyond the suspension, Toffoli blocked new transfers from the Special Campaign Financing Fund, the public money that bankrolls Brazilian campaigns, and banned the ticket from debates on radio, television, podcasts and other media. Toffoli is the rapporteur for the candidacy's registration case, and the ruling also covers the vice presidential candidate, Aroldo Medina.

The "strategic omission" cited by Toffoli

The order targets social media profiles that were never declared to the electoral court. In the registration request filed on August 7, Santos reported only one account on X and a website, which may stay active. Only on August 19 did the ticket present 18 social media accounts, 16 of them past the deadline, according to the TSE. Electoral law requires candidates to declare, at the moment of registration, every account that will be used for campaign propaganda.

Toffoli wrote that the ticket committed a "strategic omission" by delaying the information. "The strategic omission of information about the social networks, which underpins the entire legitimacy of the digital campaign to be carried out, denotes in itself a lack of commitment to those legal interests," the minister wrote.

"The unreported accounts benefit from opaque algorithms and evade social and legal control. They disguise themselves as ordinary users, moving on the margins of the legitimate space of competition in the digital environment."

In a passage cited by BBC News Brasil, Toffoli states that the candidate knew of the obligation and that "the benefits already obtained are irreversible." Informing the addresses "by simple filing in the case records, with no request for urgency or even justification for the late action, requires immediate measures," the minister wrote.

Fines and deadlines in the ruling

Violating the order carries defined fines. Each propaganda post after the decision draws a fine of R$ 50,000, including posts on third-party profiles, and each debate appearance also costs R$ 50,000. Spending of fund money already transferred is suspended, on pain of a penalty of 1% of the amounts. Toffoli gave the campaign 24 hours to report the creation date of each profile and when it began to be used for propaganda. Digital platforms were also reached: they must preserve content posted since August 7, suspend the irregular accounts and remove them from recommendation systems, under a fine of R$ 10,000 per hour per profile, and hand over data on posts, boosts and ads, under a daily fine of R$ 50,000.

Toffoli had already pulled the registration case from the court's agenda over the weekend, citing indications of irregularities, and repeated the argument now. The registration remains undecided. Santos, a businessman and founder of the MBL, the free-market activist group, is running in his first election. He has not publicly commented on the ruling and called a news conference for 5 p.m. on Monday in São Paulo.