The Defense Ministry and the Federal Accounts Court have not yet published reports about their respective inspections of the receipts of voting machines carried out after Sunday’s vote.
After polls close at 5 pm, poll workers are required to print a bulletin which shows how many votes each candidate got in each electronic voting machine. Brazil’s elections use almost half a million such machines across 5,570 municipalities.
The Federal Accounts Court announced it would inspect 540 bulletins on Election Day, comparing their results to those published online. The court told The Brazilian Report that part of the information will be presented in November — after the elections are concluded. A detailed report will be published in early 2023.
Separately, sources within the Defense Ministry confirmed to The Brazilian Report that the military would also carry out checks of voting machine printouts, which they have no constitutional mandate to do.
The ministry never publicly acknowledged that it would carry out such an inspection, nor did it ever confirm the number of bulletins to be checked. The ministry did not reply to The Brazilian Report’s questions on the matter.
Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva finished first in the polls, with 48 percent of the vote, followed by incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro with 43 percent.
Should Lula win the runoff election on October 30, President Bolsonaro is expected to try to discredit the results. The inspection carried out by the military could be used as a disinformation tool in that effort.
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