The Carter Center will not send an election-observation mission to Brazil for the October 2026 vote, according to single-source reporting by Folha de S.Paulo. The organization informed Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) that it could not assemble and finance a team, removing the only invited U.S. organization from the international monitoring effort.
The Carter Center, founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, has organized more than 100 election-observation missions in 40 countries. It monitored Brazil’s 2022 election, in which Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated Jair Bolsonaro.
Funding Constraints
The center had spent months trying to raise the money needed to return to Brazil. Its financing problems are part of a broader crisis affecting international development and cooperation agencies, which Folha linked mainly to policies adopted by U.S. President Donald Trump.
The Carter Center receives funding from governments, individuals, companies, foundations and international agencies. The United States has historically been an important contributor, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and directly through the State Department. European governments and the European Union have also supported the organization.
In a May 2025 article, Carter Center CEO Paige Alexander said nearly 10% of the organization’s funding had “suddenly evaporated” after cuts to U.S. international aid. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution later reported that the center estimated its losses at about $11 million, or approximately R$56.4 million at the exchange rate cited by Folha.
Some foundations that previously supported the center reportedly shifted their resources toward emergency and humanitarian programs after the Trump administration moved to close USAID. The European Union’s decision to organize its own mission also affected fundraising. Some European governments that might have contributed to the Carter Center instead directed resources to the EU mission, which will monitor a Brazilian election for the first time.
The Carter Center cannot accept money from a government or institution in the country where it conducts election observation.
International Monitoring
The TSE is expected to rely primarily on missions from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Union. The Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP) and the Inter-American Union of Electoral Organizations (Uniore) are also expected to participate. The African Union, Arab League and Mercosur Parliament had been invited but had not confirmed their participation, Folha reported.
The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), another U.S. organization present in 2022, was not invited this year because the TSE knew its budget depended heavily on USAID and that it would likely lack the resources to participate.
TSE President Kassio Nunes Marques has argued to interlocutors that broader international monitoring could help protect the election from challenges to the results and Brazil’s electronic voting system. Concerns increased after The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration planned to send officials to Brazil to raise questions about the process. Brazil’s Foreign Ministry denied them visas, according to Folha.
In its 2022 report, the Carter Center said institutional actors it met in Brazil generally expressed high confidence in the election and considered the voting machines secure and reliable. It also criticized the lack of an adequate legal and regulatory framework for balancing freedom of expression with state intervention against false content and hate speech, and recommended broader voter access to polling places and greater university involvement in election audits.