(Brasilia) The party of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro asked the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) on Tuesday to cancel the votes from more than 280,000 electronic ballot boxes, arguing that “malfunctions” would have prevented his re-election against Lula.
“We demand the invalidation of the votes from the electronic ballot boxes for which insurmountable malfunctions have been brought to light, and to draw the legal consequences for the results of the second round”, on October 30, can we read in the complaint tabled by the Liberal Party (PL).
This formation, which obtained the greatest number of deputies and senators at the end of the legislative elections, considers that the “malfunctioning” of five models of ballot boxes “calls into question the transparency of the electoral process”.
The PL argues that these dysfunctions were demonstrated in an audit report commissioned by the party.
According to the PL lawyer, more than 280,000 electronic ballot boxes used during the ballot would be of one of these five models in question.
According to the PL count, the cancellation of the votes from these ballot boxes would give victory to Jair Bolsonaro with 51.05% of the vote, which is practically the opposite of the official result (50.9% for Lula, 49.1% for the outgoing president).
TSE President Alexandre de Moraes responded to the complaint by explaining that these ballot box models were used not only in the second round, but also in the first, on October 2.
He therefore asks that the complaint “concerns the two towers”, under penalty of being rejected without being analyzed.
But a cancellation of part of the votes obtained on October 2 would also have an impact on the legislative elections, which took place the same day, on the same ballot boxes. This could jeopardize the election of many PL parliamentarians.
Jair Bolsonaro has practically disappeared from public life for more than three weeks, after the announcement of his defeat against the left-wing ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2003-2010).
He only emerged from his silence two days later, without explicitly acknowledging his defeat, and evoking the “feeling of injustice” of his supporters who were demonstrating in front of barracks to demand military intervention.