Bolsonaro is moving the needle on paper ballots

Immediately after losing the tightest presidential runoff election in Brazilian democratic times, center-right candidate Aécio Neves called for a recount. In the weeks leading up to Election Day, Mr. Neves had climbed in the polls and reached a statistical tie with incumbent Dilma Rousseff. His momentum was not enough to unseat her, however, and he lost by just 3 percentage points. 

Though the recount confirmed Ms. Rousseff’s victory, Mr. Neves remained restless. He asked electoral courts to examine the “integrity” of the vote and requested an audit of electronic voting machines, suggesting the count had been defrauded. In Congress, Mr. Neves and his Brazilian Social Democracy Party pushed to pass a bill that would bring back paper ballots to supplement the country’s fully electronic system.

The proposal would mean that, after selecting their candidate on the electronic voting machine, citizens would receive a printed vote receipt to be deposited into a physical ballot box.

In theory, this would add an extra level of accountability for the voting process, allowing for physical recounts if necessary. But after decades of use, Brazil’s electronic ballot boxes are proven to be almost completely infallible on their own — with no credible fraud allegations having surfaced since their adoption in 1996.

In an odd twist of fate, the bill to reintroduce paper ballots had been submitted by Jair Bolsonaro, who at the time was a somewhat comical figure in Congress, adored only by retired members of the military.

Despite a lack of evidence, Aécio Neves’ insistence led to the first doubts about Brazil’s state-of-the-art electronic voting system. At that point, it was merely the cry of a sore loser.

Now, the same arguments are being used by Jair Bolsonaro himself, in what appears to be a plot for...