2022 Race

Bolsonaro campaign maintains putschist push to toss 60 percent of voting machines

putschist party bolsonaro Petrobras
Valdemar Costa Neto, chairman of the Liberal Party, has tried to play a double game. Photo: Mateus Bonomi/Agif/Folhapress

President Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral coalition on Wednesday reiterated its challenge to roughly 60 percent of the electronic voting machines used in the October 30 runoff — in defiance of a ruling issued the previous day.

On Tuesday, Brazil’s chief electoral justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered that the campaign must also request the nullification of votes cast in the October 2 first round, given that the machines used were the same, failing which the petition would be rejected immediately.

That would mean challenging not just the presidential race but also the elections for governor, Congress (the Liberal Party obtained the biggest bench in both chambers), and state legislatures.

Lawyer Marcelo Bessa, who represents the defeated Bolsonaro campaign, wrote that extending the petition to the election’s first round would be a “hasty measure,” due to the need to include as plaintiffs “thousands of candidates who ran for political office.”

However, the petition presented on Tuesday is specifically based on the allegation that the problem is with the older electronic voting machines themselves, used in both rounds of the election. In his response to Justice Moraes today, Mr. Bessa wrote that it “would not be possible to certify nor guarantee” the legitimacy of these machines’ results.

As The Brazilian Report has shown, a phony investigation commissioned by Mr. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party supposedly found that almost 280,000 older electronic voting machines are not properly auditable, making it impossible for electoral authorities to trust their results. 

If the older machines were discarded, Mr. Bolsonaro would have been re-elected with “51.05 percent of the valid votes,” the court filing claims.

In a Wednesday press conference, Valdemar Costa Neto — the chairman of the Liberal Party — did not address a question about the possible individual verification of older voting machines. 

He also denied any involvement of the president in the petition, even though it was signed by the defeated incumbent’s own coalition.

President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is to take office on January 1, 2023. Although the outgoing administration has already set up a transition cabinet, Mr. Bolsonaro himself has not explicitly conceded the election.

Since the president’s October 30 defeat, hundreds of his supporters have blocked roads and are picketing around military garrisons, openly calling for a coup and against Lula taking office as president. Demonstrations continue to take place and have grown more radical — deploying tactics akin to terrorism, according to law enforcement agents.


UPDATE: On Wednesday evening, Justice Moraes dismissed the petition and issued a BRL 22.9 million (USD 4.3 million) fine on the coalition. We will break down his ruling in the November 24 issue of the Brazil Daily newsletter.