Some 2,800 Brazilians in Utah eligible to cast ballots in Brazil's presidential contest
by Tim Vandenack ksl · KSL.comKEY TAKEAWAYS
- Voting in Brazil's presidential race is set for Sunday and around 2,800 Brazilians in Utah will be able to cast ballots at a Millcreek polling site.
- Carolina Herrin, a Brazilian woman now living in Utah, said many here in the community still feel connected to Brazil.
- President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva faces a challenge from Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro.
SALT LAKE CITY — The focus for many in Utah with political inclinations may be the U.S. mid-term elections, culminating on Election Day, Nov. 3.
Many in Utah's Brazilian community, however, have another focus — presidential elections in the South American country. Voting in the race between incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Brazilian Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro is set for Sunday and as many as 2,800 Brazilians living in Utah will be able to cast ballots at a polling place in Millcreek.
Carolina Herrin, originally from Brazil but now living in Spanish Fork and leading the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce of Utah, is among them. She plans to vote and will help manage the Millcreek polling site, assisting representatives from the Brazilian Consulate of Los Angeles, which serves Utah.
"We're still connected. Our families are there, loved ones are there, friends are there," she said. "So it's important for us to be able to help them in any way we can by doing our part in voting."
Peruvians and Colombians in Utah cast ballots here in their nations' respective presidential races earlier this year. Eligible Chileans here cast ballots in that nation's presidential contest last December.
In the first round of presidential voting in Brazil on Oct. 4, which narrowed the list of 12 candidates to Lula and Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Herrin said around 1,000 Brazilians in Utah cast ballots at the Millcreek site. The election is the focus of intense attention in Brazil, and with voting on Sunday to decide the matter, she expects the number of people casting ballots in Utah to rise.
Bolsonaro, a right-wing candidate, garnered 47% of the vote in the Oct. 4 voting to 45.2% for Lula, a left-wing hopeful. Neither garnered more than 50%, though, setting the stage for Sunday's runoff. Voting at the Millcreek location at Lumos Language School at 220 E. 3900 South goes from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.
'Time for a change'
Like Herrin, many in Utah's Brazilian community remain connected to the country through relatives still there, and they're just as focused on the presidential contest as those still in Brazil. Herrin is a naturalized U.S. citizen and dual Brazilian-U.S. national and still has family in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
"I'm eternally grateful for this country, for the freedoms I share here," she said. "So it's almost like you want that same feel and that same process to take place for your loved ones and for the country that you were born in and you're connected to."
She favors Bolsonaro, the more conservative candidate, in Sunday's closely contested race. The conservative hopefuls in the most recent Peruvian, Colombian and Chilean presidential races ended up on top.
"I strongly believe that it's time for a change. It's not necessarily a left or right issue. It's a human issue," she said. "We need people that are going to care for Brazilians and give Brazilians what they're truly after and need."
Voting is obligatory for most Brazilians, but only those in Utah who have filed the required paperwork with the Brazilian Consulate in Los Angeles will be able to cast ballots at the Millcreek site. Despachante 55, a company that provides documentation services for Brazilians in the United States, identified 14 polling sites in the United States during the Oct. 4 round of voting, including the Utah location.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.