PROTEÇÃO DA CONFIANÇA NO CONSTITUCIONALISMO DIGITAL ELEITORAL: coerência institucional, inteligência artificial e plataformas digitais

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which legitimate expectations, legal certainty and the prohibition of contradictory conduct may constrain changes in the practices of electoral authorities and digital platforms concerning artificial intelligence, synthetic content, content moderation and political-electoral communication. It asks whether and how suppressio and surrectio can be functionally reinterpreted within Electoral Digital Constitutionalism without creating a right to maintain unlawful practices, restricting mandatory public powers or preventing urgent measures required to protect electoral integrity. The study adopts a qualitative, legal-dogmatic, documentary, case-law and functional-comparative methodology. It analyses the Brazilian Constitution, the Law of Introduction to Brazilian Law, Federal Administrative Procedure Law, the Brazilian Internet Civil Rights Framework, the General Data Protection Law, TSE Resolution No. 23,610/2019 as consolidated in 2026, TSE Ordinance No. 463/2026, case law on suppressio and surrectio, and parameters drawn from the Digital Services Act, the EU AI Act and the EU Regulation on political advertising. The central argument is that, in digital electoral governance, these doctrines neither extinguish public powers nor validate disinformation, prohibited deepfakes or breaches of labelling duties. Their legitimate function is primarily procedural: requiring publicity, coherence, equal treatment, reasons, protection against improper retroactivity, transition when legally possible, notice, effective contestation and human review. The article proposes an original nine-criterion Test for the Protection of Legitimate Expectations in Digital Electoral Governance and applies it to analytical scenarios. It concludes that protected expectations do not freeze regulation; rather, they subject institutional change to constitutional legality, electoral integrity and informational due process.