Saraiva Law

3,029 of 9 January 1881, was the law that reformed the electoral system in the Empire of Brazil, instituting, for the first time, the elector registration in the country, and the direct elections for all elective positions: senators, deputies to the General Assembly, members of the Provincial Legislative Assemblies, municipal councilors and justices of the peace, but prohibited the illiterate to vote, which significantly reduced the number of people eligible to vote as most of the country's population was illiterate.

The law also established that immigrants, in particular merchants and small industrialists, as well as those who were not Catholics, the official religion of the Empire, could be elected, provided they had an annual income of no less than two hundred thousand réis.

To maintain the order of the monarchic regime, the Empire used a political system in which the two main parties were controlled by the government and the electoral process kept much of society marginalized.

It was from the economic progress in the coffee cycle, mainly in the province of São Paulo, that urban groups began to demand greater political participation, the replacement of the indirect electoral system by the direct one and the end of the census vote.

This requirement meant that, in the country's main legislative positions, there were no representatives of the majority of the Brazilian population, which were the less financially affluent layers of society.

[1][3] This context was responsible for placing illiteracy as a central topic of discussion at the time, causing the definition of an illiterate person to be associated with a condition of ignorance, blindness, lack of intelligence and political incapacity.

The emperor appointed José Antônio Saraiva to institute a new ministry that would have the task of carrying out an electoral reform in Brazil on 28 April 1880.

In this project, illiterates continued to be excluded from the electoral process, though indirectly, since, although literacy was no longer mandatory, at the time of voting the individual had to write the names of the candidates and sign the date of the election.