Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court has ordered the national telecommunications regulator, Anatel, to provide additional information on failures in free access to digital electoral services during the first round of the 2026 election.
In a decision issued on October 14, Justice Cristiano Zanin partially granted a request by the Partido Verde in ADPF 1355. The ruling follows an Anatel inspection that found access exempt from mobile data caps was not fully uniform across every tested combination of provider, service and state.
The court gave Anatel 48 hours to submit missing inspection materials and technical details, identify each provider’s implementation and configured domains or applications, and explain the recorded failures. It also ordered the regulator to report the status of each operator’s configuration for the second round.
What happened
Anatel conducted daily inspections from October 1 to October 5, covering providers that represent about 98% of Brazil’s mobile-service market and all 27 federation units.
Its report found that regular access to official Electoral Justice domains improved over the inspection period. But it did not establish complete and consistent access in all provider-service-state combinations.
The decision records recurring and geographically dispersed failures involving the authentication endpoints sso.acesso.gov.br and form.omni.serpro.gov.br. It also identifies problems affecting the e-Título, Pardal and Boletim na Mão applications.
The ruling does not make a finding of criminal conduct or misconduct by telecommunications operators. The documented shortcomings were identified in Anatel’s own first-round inspection report, and the court’s order is directed at obtaining further technical information and overseeing implementation.
Why it matters
The case concerns whether mobile users can access key Electoral Justice services without consuming their data allowances. Those services include digital tools connected to voter information, electoral reporting and official election-related access.
For readers outside Brazil, the dispute illustrates a practical challenge in digital-election administration: a policy can be established nationally while its performance depends on technical configurations across multiple providers, applications, authentication systems and regions.
The court specifically sought explanations for the failures and further details about the underlying infrastructure. It also gave the Superior Electoral Court, known as the TSE, 48 hours to identify the application and authentication dependencies required for the service to operate.
The bigger picture
Anatel’s inspection covered nearly the entire mobile market by representation and every Brazilian state and the Federal District. Yet the results described by the court show that broad coverage of an inspection does not itself mean every access route worked consistently.
The distinction is central to the ruling. Access to official Electoral Justice domains improved during the first-round period, according to the inspection, but the evidence before the court did not show uniform compliance for every tested provider, service and location.
Zanin’s decision therefore focuses on documentation, technical explanation and preparation for the next electoral access window rather than assigning responsibility for the reported failures.
By the numbers
- 48 hours: The period given to Anatel to provide additional materials, technical information and explanations, and to the TSE to identify relevant dependencies.
- October 1-5: The period of Anatel’s daily first-round inspections.
- About 98%: The share of Brazil’s mobile-service market represented by the providers covered by the inspection.
- 27: The number of federation units included in the inspection.
- October 22: The date before which second-round configuration and testing must be completed, as the second-round access window is set to open then.
What happens next
Anatel must provide the court with the requested annexes and technical details, including information on each operator’s implementation and the domains and applications configured for access.
It must also report the state of second-round configuration by provider. Configuration and testing are required before October 22, when the second-round access window begins.
The court’s order creates a near-term accountability process around whether the systems needed for data-cap-exempt access are properly identified, configured and tested before that window opens.