We had an extended conversation about how the Brazilian Senate is using—and hopes to expand—artificial intelligence to enable greater citizen engagement in lawmaking. We are sharing our discussion in four posts to be followed by commentary. The complete series will be cross-posted at Bussola-Tech.
Part 2: The Interactive Event: Using AI to Improve Citizen Engagement in Legislative Hearings
Part 3: Legislative Workshops: Using AI to Strengthen Youth Engagement
Part 4: Brazil’s Online Consultation System is Reimagining Democracy for the Digital Age
When an 82-year-old retiree from the coastal city of Maceió called Brazil's Senate hotline to suggest that medication labels needed larger font sizes, he had no idea that a senator from Amazonas would champion his simple suggestion. Across the country, Alessandro from Minas Gerais proposed legislation to prevent internet service providers from throttling speeds for services like Netflix—five years later, his net neutrality idea became reality. These citizens are not anomalies but participants in Brazil's systematic approach to democratic engagement.
Imagine a democracy where ordinary people have influenced 46 legislative bills through more than 120,000 submitted ideas and 11 million votes.
Imagine a democracy where ordinary people have influenced 46 legislative bills through more than 120,000 submitted ideas and 11 million votes.
From a proposal to end housing subsidies for deputies and judges and terminate perks for former presidents to the idea to legalize marijuana and ban straws, the public has had a significant impact on lawmaking.
While none of the resident proposals have become law as is (citizen proposals are only 140 characters), their input has helped to shape the legislative process. Unlike most nations where citizen participation remains limited to periodic voting or the occasional town hall, Brazil has built four robust, integrated participatory channels that invite citizens into every stage of governance. Through these channels, Brazilians can propose laws, question witnesses, participate in educational workshops to learn how to craft legislation, and vote on pending bills—creating an ecosystem of engagement unseen elsewhere.
This isn't a theoretical vision—it's Brazil's current reality. In most democracies, the public exercises political power primarily at the ballot box every few years before returning to the sidelines. Brazil's Federal Senate, however, has reimagined this relationship, transforming citizens from occasional voters into active participants in lawmaking.
The system faces challenges—it is time consuming, often duplicative, hard to manage, and produces primarily indirect legislative outcomes. But now Brazil has the opportunity to use artificial intelligence to supercharge this participation and make it more directly relevant. As LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman writes in his new book Superagency: “Instead of thinking of AI first and foremost as a mechanism that could be harnessed for command and control governance, through applications like facial recognition, predictive policing, and algorithmic surveillance, we can choose a future where AI is used to connect citizens more substantively to legislative processes.”
Unlike most nations where citizen participation remains limited to periodic voting or the occasional town hall, Brazil has built four robust, integrated participatory channels that invite citizens into every stage of governance.
The Brazilian Senate’s established participatory framework provides the perfect foundation for AI enhancement, allowing Brazil to overcome existing limitations while building on citizen engagement mechanisms already deeply integrated into its democratic institutions.
The Legislative Idea Platform: The People’s Proposals
Through the Senate's e-Citizenship website, any Brazilian can propose new laws directly to their Senators. The process, known as the Legislative Idea, launched in 2012, is remarkably accessible—citizens submit a brief tweet-length proposal with their first name and state of residence. For those who prefer speaking or are less comfortable with technology, a toll-free number connects them with Senate staff who capture and submit their ideas online. Additionally, people who are deaf can submit ideas in sign language by sharing a video with the e-Citizenship team.
The Senate's 15-person e-Citizenship team reviews submissions—over a thousand each month—to ensure they comply with constitutional requirements. Once approved, ideas remain open for public support for four months. The three most voted-up ideas from the last 24 hours are displayed on the portal's homepage, encouraging public review and participation.
If a proposal collects 20,000 signatures, it is sent to a committee where it can be developed into either a formal bill or a proposal for constitutional amendments. While Senators don't always wait for these thresholds—they can champion promising ideas earlier in the process—the Human Rights and Participatory Legislation Committee plays a key role in transforming qualified proposals into formal legislation. The system has proven remarkably engaging, with over 11 million signatures recorded across various legislative ideas.
Recently, a suggestion to "Use the billion-dollar budget approved for electoral campaigns to rebuild Rio Grande do Sul, specifically the areas affected by the biggest environmental and humanitarian disaster in the region” was approaching the 20,000 up-vote threshold.
Challenges and Limitations of the Legislative Idea Process
While the Legislative Idea process has successfully brought citizen voices into Brazil's lawmaking, several challenges remain. Achieving tens of thousands of up-votes is a substantial hurdle, especially since only the most popular proposals appear on the home page. With over a thousand ideas submitted monthly, promising proposals can be overlooked. Additionally, similar ideas often split support across multiple proposals, diluting their impact.
Upgrading the Legislative Idea with AI
Generative AI (GenAI), a form of machine learning which recognizes patterns in language, could significantly reduce duplication. GenAI can analyze new submissions against existing ones, flagging overlapping content, allowing Senate staff to automate the process of inviting submitters to join existing proposals before posting their own. This step could reduce fragmentation of support and streamline the review process.
Beyond reducing duplication, AI could also help Senate staff to organize proposals by theme, giving political leaders insight into public concerns categorized by geography and topic. GoVocal, a citizen engagement company in Belgium and Remesh, another engagement platform from the United States, have both developed clustering algorithms for grouping related ideas that, if used, could facilitate a more holistic approach to addressing public issues.
The current system's display of only the three most popular ideas on the front page limits exposure for newer submissions. Iceland's Better Reykjavik platform, developed by the nonprofit technology provider Citizens Foundation, randomizes the display of public submissions to ensure all ideas get public exposure.
Brazil could implement AI-driven rotation that's more sophisticated than simple randomization. Algorithms could prioritize ideas based on engagement metrics and relevance to current events, ensuring that trending proposals are highlighted while giving less popular submissions fair visibility. Such a dynamic system could adjust featured submissions based on community interests, fostering inclusive discourse by highlighting resonant ideas.
One persistent challenge in public consultation is the overwhelming volume of diverse comments that parliamentary officials must process. Brazil needs a system that can categorize feedback based on key themes, sentiments, and patterns, helping to distill complex inputs into concise summaries while ensuring diverse viewpoints aren’t lost.
One persistent challenge in public consultation is the overwhelming volume of diverse comments that parliamentary officials must process. Brazil needs a system that can categorize feedback based on key themes, sentiments, and patterns, helping to distill complex inputs into concise summaries while ensuring diverse viewpoints aren’t lost.
Fortunately, they can build on promising research in this area. Google DeepMind's recent "Habermas Machine" experiment involving over 5,000 participants demonstrated that AI could effectively synthesize diverse viewpoints into consensus statements that participants found clearer and more representative than those created by human mediators. The system was particularly adept at incorporating minority perspectives rather than simply reflecting majority opinions. By adapting similar technology, Brazil could more effectively integrate the full spectrum of citizen perspectives into the legislative process, making the overwhelming task of processing public input both more manageable and more inclusive.
The next post in this series will discuss how the Senate is using technology to involve residents in legislative hearings.
Alisson Bruno Dias de Queiroz is Coordinator of the e-Citizenship Program, Senate of Brazil
Luís Kimaid is Executive Director of Bússola Tech
