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RIO – Although the eyes of the TSE are focused on fighting misinformation, every day a scheme capable of influencing electoral results grows in the country, especially in small cities. The number of surveys funded by the company conducting the survey has practically tripled this year, according to data from the court itself. Until yesterday 3,499 surveys were registered in this mold, 174% more than in the same period in 2016 (1,279).
The expansion of the market to measure voting intention is accompanied by practices that can interfere with the electoral process, especially in small cities. The numbers hide the lack of quality control of the surveys that are produced and officially registered as surveys. GLOBO identified allegations of fraudulent results offers, surveys using Google and Facebook forms, and the use of false statistical data.
read: Record statistician in polls to be investigated by the council
By reporting that they conducted the research with their own funds, without an external contractor, the institutes do not need to be held accountable for the origin of the money. There are cases of surveys carried out by companies that declared to the Federal Treasury that their activity is transporting by vans and filming weddings.
Ipop Cidades & Negócios leads the segment. In eight months, it invested R $ 650 thousand in 350 surveys, in 192 cities, all with practically the same cost, of R $ 2 thousand, regardless of the size and location of the sample. Much more than the capital stock that was opened in February of this year, of R $ 150 thousand. In the last week, the company registered 114 surveys on the TSE, with the forecast of serving 57 thousand people.
The head of the institute, Márcio Rogério Pereira Gomes, owned another company, which led the self-financed surveys in 2016. He was recently sentenced to seven months in prison, under an open regime, and paid R $ 213 thousand for disseminating fraudulent investigations related to municipal elections in four cities in the interior of São Paulo.
In 2020, Ipop has accumulated more than 30 cases in the Electoral Court of Goiás. In one of them, in Pontalina, the Public Ministry filed a complaint against the company after receiving a complaint that Gomes “offered a more favorable result to a pre-candidate.”
In testimony, the candidate for mayor of the PSC, Mack, said that the businessman asked for R $ 6,000 to publish a poll in which he would appear with 21.3% of the voting intentions. The offer was rejected and, a month later, a survey was published in which Mack had 11.3%. After the disclosure, the Justice prohibited the investigation.
– There are indications that the fraud occurred and that he (Gomes) was the author – said the lawyer Guilherme Oliveira, who took the testimony of the candidate and has the audio of his conversation with the businessman at hand.
To know: the main dates of the electoral calendar
In another case in the labor court, a former Ipop employee reports a different scenario than the one presented by the company in recent months. Hired as an investigating agent at the end of January, she reports lack of salary and accumulation of functions that the statistician responsible for the investigation must perform, such as making the records presented to the voters and defining the neighborhoods of the cities where the questionnaires will be applied. .
In screenshots of conversations attached by the defense of the employee in the process, the owner of Ipop asks the employee to send a WhatsApp list of the neighborhoods of Guapó, Aragoiana, Varjão, Cezarina and Indaiara, where the questionnaires of the Institute. The employee forwards the list to Márcio and notices that he is making the disk that will be used in the investigation.
The questionnaires have flaws, such as alphabetically disordered names and the presence of candidates who are not even part of the dispute. The stratification data changes completely. In the same city, women represented 27.3% of those surveyed in July. In October, the amount rose to 48.2%.
Wanted, the businessman stated that the searches are prosecuted by candidates unhappy with the results:
– If you were a candidate and there was a result in which you are in second or third place, wouldn’t you disqualify the investigation? We are winning (in Justice) in all.
Falsehood even in name
There are also episodes of fraud in the use of the names of the statisticians responsible for the technical basis of the investigation. In July, Eurimar Reis Damaceno Santos inaugurated Datapes, in Palmas.
The main activity of the company is the filming of parties and events, but since its foundation, it has carried out ten surveys, at a total cost of R $ 30 thousand, paid for by the company itself. All supposedly signed by Andrigo Rodrigues, statistician from Santa Catarina. Wanted by GLOBO, he denied having done the job.
– I never spoke to anyone from Tocantins. I’m not even registered with the Council there, ”he said, who recorded an incident in the case.
By phone, a company representative was unable to provide the names of the statisticians responsible for the investigation and hung up after being asked if Rodrigues had denied working for the company.
In Ipiranga (PR), a company that rented vans to transport the wife of the candidate for councilor Dodô Nascimento (PSB) was accused of conducting an electoral survey with a non-existent mathematician’s record, when the legislation requires a statistician – it prevented the Electoral Justice the publication.
Darling, the candidate initially said that he did the research on behalf of a Facebook page and that the mathematician’s record was in error. He then denied taking the survey at the page’s request. When asked about the financier of the survey, he hung up.
In Bahia, the Regional Electoral Court delivered a survey to a Facebook poll, while in Rio Grande do Norte, the platform used and registered was a Google form.
The Brazilian Association of Research Companies (Abep) brought a representation to the Attorney General’s Office denouncing the series of suspicions.
– We are talking about something around R $ 45 million available for this “benefit”, which is to keep the cities informed with free surveys. When we realized that it was happening on a recurring basis, we imagined that there was some anomaly – said the coordinator of the Abep Public Opinion Council, João Francisco Meira,
For the vice president of the Federal Council of Statistics, Mauricio Pinho Gama, it is necessary for the TSE to have greater control over the system used to record withdrawals.
– There are seven regional (councils) for the entire national territory. We have a small number of employees. We try to do what we can, but it is not an effective inspection – he pointed out.
In a note, the TSE reported that it does not carry out any prior control over the results of the investigation, nor does it manage or deal with its dissemination, acting whenever it is caused through representation. According to the court, a more secure system for recording the investigation will be implemented next year.
