Brazil: Bolsonaro’s party contests election result

Jair Bolsonaro has not yet publicly admitted his defeat in Brazil’s presidential election. His party has now lodged an appeal against the result. She claims to have discovered defects in some voting machines.

Around three weeks after the runoff election, the party of the voted-out Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, PL, lodged a complaint against the result. It requires the electoral authority to invalidate most of the votes cast on electronic voting machines. The Partido Liberal cited a software error that, according to independent experts, had no impact on the reliability of the election results.

The electoral authorities have already proclaimed Bolsonaro’s opponent, leftist ex-head of state Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the winner of the runoff election at the end of October. He defeated the right-wing incumbent with 50.9 percent of the vote, Bolsonaro got 49.1 percent. It was the closest outcome in a presidential race since Brazil’s return to democracy in 1985. Even numerous allies of Bolsonaro have now accepted the result, and he himself has not yet publicly admitted defeat.

PL speaks of “malfunctions”

PL leader Valdemar Costa told reporters in Brasilia that nearly 280,000, or about 59 percent of all machines used in the Oct. 30 runoff, had “malfunctioned.” These “malfunctions” would have prevented Bolsonaro’s re-election. According to a count by the PL, if the votes from these voting machines were annulled, Bolsonaro would have won the election with 51.05 percent.

The head of the Supreme Electoral Court, Alexandre de Moraes, immediately ordered that the court would only consider the application if Bolsonaro’s party submitted a revised application within 24 hours, which also included the results of the first round of the election on October 2nd. In the first round, the Partido Liberal had won more seats in both chambers of Congress than any other party.