BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Greater than three weeks after shedding a re-election bid, President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday blamed a software program bug and requested the electoral authority to void votes solid on most voting machines. digital voting from the Brazilian nation, though impartial consultants say that the bug doesn’t exist. doesn’t have an effect on the reliability of the outcomes.
Such motion would depart Bolsonaro with 51% of the remaining legitimate votes — and a re-election victory, Marcelo de Bessa, the lawyer who filed the 33-page request on behalf of the president and his Liberal Occasion, instructed reporters.
The electoral authority has already declared victory for Bolsonaro’s nemesis, leftist former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and even most of the president’s allies have accepted the outcomes. Protesters in cities throughout the nation have staunchly refused to do the identical, particularly with Bolsonaro refusing to concede.
Liberal Occasion chief Valdemar Costa and an auditor employed by the celebration instructed reporters in Brasilia that their evaluation discovered that every one machines courting from earlier than 2020 – nearly 280,000 of them, or about 59% of the whole used within the October 30 second spherical – lacked particular person identification. numbers within the inner newspapers.
Neither defined the way it might need affected the election outcomes, however stated they had been asking the election authority to invalidate all votes solid on these machines.
The grievance known as the bug an “irreparable nonconformance as a result of malfunction” calling into query the authenticity of the outcomes.
Instantly afterwards, the top of the electoral authority issued a call which implicitly raised the chance that Bolsonaro’s personal celebration would undergo from such a problem.
Alexandre de Moraes stated the courtroom wouldn’t contemplate the grievance except the celebration supplied an amended report inside 24 hours that would come with the outcomes of the primary spherical of elections on October 2, by which the Liberal Occasion gained greater than seats in each homes of Congress than every other. .
Creomar de Souza, a political analyst with Dharma Political Danger and Technique, stated the wording of de Moraes’ ruling signifies the electoral tribunal is more likely to reject the attraction.
The bug wasn’t identified earlier than, however consultants stated it did not have an effect on the outcomes both. Every voting machine can nonetheless be simply recognized by different means, similar to its metropolis and electoral district, in response to Wilson Ruggiero, professor of pc engineering and digital techniques on the Polytechnic College of the College of Sao Paulo.
Diego Aranha, affiliate professor of techniques safety at Aarhus College in Denmark, who has been concerned in official safety testing of Brazil’s electoral system, agrees.
“It by no means compromises reliability or credibility,” Ruggiero instructed The Related Press by telephone. “The important thing level that ensures accuracy is the digital signature related to every voting machine.”
Though the machines shouldn’t have particular person ID numbers of their inner logs, these numbers seem on printed receipts that present the sum of all votes solid for every candidate, Aranha stated, including that the bug didn’t. detected solely by the efforts of the voters. energy to make sure higher transparency.
Bolsonaro’s lower than two-point loss to da Silva on October 30 was the narrowest margin since Brazil returned to democracy in 1985. Though the president didn’t explicitly cry foul, he refused to concede defeat or congratulate your opponent – leaving room for followers to attract their very own conclusions.
Many protested relentlessly, alleging electoral fraud and demanding the intervention of the armed forces.
Dozens of Bolsonaro supporters gathered outdoors the press convention on Tuesday, wearing Brazil’s inexperienced and yellow flag and chanting patriotic songs. Some verbally attacked and pushed journalists attempting to enter the room.
Bolsonaro has spent greater than a 12 months claiming Brazil’s digital voting system is susceptible to fraud, with out ever presenting proof.
The president’s son, federal lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, repeated that concern at a convention in Mexico final week.
“Now we have all the time been cautious of those machines. … We would like an enormous audit,” the younger Bolsonaro stated. “There may be very sturdy proof to order an investigation into the elections in Brazil.”
Brazil started utilizing an digital voting system in 1996, and election safety consultants contemplate such techniques to be much less safe than hand-marked paper ballots as a result of they go away no verifiable paper path. However Brazil’s system has come beneath scrutiny from nationwide and worldwide consultants who’ve by no means discovered proof that it was being exploited to commit fraud.
Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco stated Tuesday afternoon that the election outcomes had been “indeniable”.
Bolsonaro has been nearly fully remoted within the official residence since his defeat on October 30, inviting a lot hypothesis as as to if he’s despondent or plotting to cling to energy.
In an interview with O Globo newspaper, Vice President Hamilton Mourão attributed Bolsonaro’s absence to erysipelas, a pores and skin an infection on his legs which he says prevents the president from sporting pants.
For its audit, the Liberal Occasion employed the Authorized Vote Institute, a bunch that has criticized the present system, saying it defies the legislation by not offering a digital document of each particular person vote.
In a separate report introduced earlier this monthBrazil’s army stated there have been flaws within the nation’s electoral techniques and supplied enhancements, however didn’t substantiate claims of fraud by some Bolsonaro supporters.
Analysts have recommended that the armed forces, which have been a key a part of Bolsonaro’s administration, might have maintained a semblance of uncertainty on the difficulty to keep away from displeasing the president. In a later assertion, the Ministry of Protection careworn that whereas it had discovered no proof of fraud in the course of the vote depend, it couldn’t rule out the chance.
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Biller reported from Rio de Janeiro. Related Press author Mark Stevenson in Mexico Metropolis contributed to this report.
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