The military’s ‘audit’ of voting machines brings nothing to the table

Around Brazil, the small clusters of putschist pro-Bolsonaro protesters gathering outside military barracks were waiting patiently for Wednesday. That was when the Brazilian Armed Forces would publish their unofficial “audit” of the country’s electronic voting system, which demonstrators were convinced would provide key evidence of voter fraud and give them a legal basis to annul the defeat of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

But, the military report did nothing of the sort. Made public on Wednesday evening, the Defense Ministry sought to avoid a frontal confrontation with election officials, though simultaneously fell short of completely dismissing far-right conspiracy theories — as we anticipated would happen in yesterday’s Brazil Daily newsletter.

In a document shared with the Superior Electoral Court, Defense Minister Paulo Sérgio Nogueira said the scope of the work conducted by the Armed Forces “was restricted to the inspection of the electronic voting system, not encompassing other activities such as possible electoral crimes.” 

In an exercise of intellectual gymnastics, Mr. Nogueira admits...