Lula's turnaround showed the weight of optional voting

The desire to reformulate the rules of the electoral system grows or weakens according to the interests of parties and politicians, based on the signals from the last election.

The re-election of President Luiz Inácio da Silva (PT) made the issue of renewing mandates disappear from the map, the extinction of which until the other day was considered essential for the good progress of institutional work.

The adoption of the mixed district vote came into play as the panacea of ​​the day and, once again, the precise and detailed examination of the reform really necessary to the means and ways of doing politics in Brazil was left aside.

The enormous and apparently definitive weight of the electorate's voluntary will was a lesson left from Lula's unprecedented turnaround over his opponent in the second round, which cannot be ignored by the political world. In other words, it shows the meaning of optional voting when voters are encouraged to make their choices and wishes count.

President Lula used and abused the public machine, but the differences between the results of the first and second rounds showed that this may have contributed, but it did not define the victory of the PT member. The decisive factor was the option to do politics, mobilize voters on the streets and online.

The data proves the participation of voters free from the obligation to vote: young people aged 16 to 17 and people aged 70 or over. As a result, abstention, which reached 12% in 1989 — the height of the enthusiasm for democratic resumption — and reached 22% in 2022, fell to the level of 19% in the final stage of 2026.

What transformed the scenario, if not the mobilization of people's wills as opposed to the inertia of the paralyzing market reserve of mandatory voting full of hassles for voters who choose not to go to the polls?

We now have, in this political-electoral dynamic of 2026, the complete demonstration that the strength of the voluntary desire for arguments can be superior to the mandatory duty due to the imposition of an anachronistic rule.