Senate e-Cidadania — Ideia Legislativa

Its AI responsibilities

Not AI-specific. A general citizen-initiated legislative proposal channel with a real numeric trigger, usable for an AI proposal.

Honest assessment

Formally strong, practically hard. Like Korea's system it has a genuine automatic trigger — 20,000 supports forces the idea onto the CDH's agenda as a Sugestão Legislativa. Unlike Korea's, the ceiling is lower: the CDH issues an opinion, and converting that into law still requires the ordinary legislative process. And 20,000 supports in 4 months requires real organised mobilisation; out of ~148,000 ideas submitted, successes are counted in the dozens, and the ones that succeed are typically backed by a large occupational constituency (e.g. military pay). An individual with no organisation behind them will not clear it. Registration and submission themselves are genuinely free and open to any Portuguese speaker.

Current business

Continuously open. Cumulative platform figures run to roughly 148,000 ideas submitted, 80,000 authors and 12.5 million supports, which tells you the base rate: the overwhelming majority never clear threshold. A first Sugestão Legislativa of 2026 reached the CDH in January 2026, and a military-pay proposal cleared 20,000 in mid-2026 — so the mechanism does fire, a few times a year.

Public route

Register free on the e-Cidadania portal. Submit an Ideia Legislativa (you may submit several, but not duplicates of your own open ones). It then has exactly 4 months to gather 20,000 supports from other registered users. On reaching 20,000 it is forwarded to the CDH and formalised as a Sugestão Legislativa (SUG), which senators debate in that committee; the CDH issues a final opinion, and a favourable one can become a Senate bill. Ideas that miss the threshold close after 4 months but remain permanently readable on the portal.

Format rules

20,000 supports within 4 months. Free registration required to submit and to support. The portal explicitly warns users not to post CPF, ID numbers, phone numbers or addresses in the idea text.

Languages

Portuguese only.

Research note

The 20,000-in-4-months threshold, the CDH referral, the conversion to Sugestão Legislativa and the registration/duplication rules are VERIFIED from the Senate's own 'como funciona' page. Cumulative platform statistics VERIFIED from the Senate's published e-Cidadania report PDF. Note there is a pending proposal to revise the admission criteria for Ideias Legislativas — the rules above are current but under review.