Bolsonaro Challenges Brazil Elections, Demands Abandon Some Machine Cast Vote – National

More than three weeks after losing his candidacy for re-election, President Jair Bolsonaro Tuesday called on election officials to void votes cast on most of Brazil’s electronic voting machines, blaming software bugs. However, an independent expert said the bug did not affect the reliability of the results.

Such action would have left Bolsonaro with 51% of the remaining valid votes, a win for re-election, said lawyer Marcelo De Bessa, who filed a 33-page request on behalf of the president and the Liberal Party. told reporters.

Election officials have already declared victory for Bolsonaro’s nemesis, left-leaning former president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, and even many of the president’s supporters have accepted the result. has steadfastly refused to do the same, especially with Bolsonaro’s refusal to concede.

Liberal Party leader Valdemar Costa and an auditor hired by the Liberal Party told reporters in Brasilia that, in their assessment, they found all the machines manufactured before 2020. Number of internal logs.

Neither said how it affected the outcome of the election, but said they were asking election officials to void all ballots cast by those machines.

The complaint characterized the bug as “an irreversible non-compliance due to a malfunction” and called into question the veracity of the results.

Shortly after, the head of the electoral authority issued a ruling that implicitly raised the possibility that Bolsonaro’s own party would suffer such a challenge.

Alexandre de Moraes said the court would not consider the complaint unless the party submitted an amended report within 24 hours containing the results of the October 2 first election round. .

Creomar de Souza, a political analyst at Dharma Political Risk and Strategy, said the wording of de Moraes’ ruling indicated that the election court was likely to dismiss the appeal.

The bug wasn’t known before, but experts said it didn’t affect the results either. It can be easily identified by other methods such as city or precinct.

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Diego Alagna, associate professor of system security at Aarhus University in Denmark, has participated in the official security tests of the Brazilian electoral system.

“It doesn’t compromise credibility or credibility,” Ruggiero told The Associated Press by phone. “A key point of assurance of accuracy is the digital signature associated with each voting machine.”

There are no personal identification numbers in the machine’s internal logs, but those numbers appear on printed receipts showing the sum of all votes cast for each candidate, Aranha said, adding that the bug added that was detected only by the efforts of the electorate. Authority to provide greater transparency.

Bolsonaro’s under-two-point loss to Da Silva on October 30 was the narrowest margin since Brazil’s return to democracy in 1985. While the president has not explicitly yelled foul play, he refuses to concede defeat or congratulate his opponents, leaving room for his supporters to draw their own conclusions.

Many are protesting relentlessly, claiming election fraud and demanding military intervention.

Dozens of Bolsonaro supporters gathered outside Tuesday’s press conference, dressed in the green and yellow of the Brazilian flag and chanting patriotic songs. There were also people who

For over a year, President Bolsonaro has claimed that Brazil’s electronic voting system could be a fraud, without providing any proof.

Brazil began using electronic voting systems in 1996, but election security experts say such systems are more secure than handwritten paper ballots because they leave no auditable paper trail. I think it’s low. However, the Brazilian system has been closely scrutinized by national and international experts, and no evidence has been found that it has been exploited for fraud.

Senate Speaker Rodrigo Pacheco said on Tuesday afternoon that the election result was “beyond doubt.”

Bolsonaro has been almost completely sequestered in his official residence since his Oct. 30 defeat, sparking widespread speculation whether he is dejected or plotting to cling to power. .

In an interview with newspaper O Globo, Vice President Hamilton Mouran said Mr Bolsonaro’s absence was due to erysipelas, a skin infection on his feet, which prevents the president from wearing trousers.

But his son Eduardo Bolsonaro, a member of Congress, is more outspoken.

“We have always distrusted these machines. “There is very strong evidence that calls for an investigation into the Brazilian elections.”

The Liberals have hired the Legal Voting Institute, a group critical of the current system, to audit. The group says it violates the law by failing to provide digital records of individual votes.

In another report released earlier this month, the Brazilian military said the country’s electoral system was flawed and suggested improvements, but did not substantiate allegations of fraud by some of Bolsonaro’s supporters.

Analysts have suggested that the military, a key component of the Bolsonaro government, may have maintained uncertainty over the issue to avoid discontent with the president. , the Ministry of Defense found no evidence of fraud in the ballot counting, but emphasized that the possibility could not be ruled out.

Biller reported from Rio de Janeiro. Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson from Mexico City contributed to this report.