Brazil’s right-wing populist head of state, Jair Bolsonaro, failed in his appeal against the results of the presidential election at the end of October. The head of Brazil’s electoral court, Alexandre de Moraes, dismissed a lawsuit by Bolsonaro’s party against the runoff, court documents show. Moraes, who is also a Supreme Court Justice, also fined Bolsonaro’s coalition parties 22.9 million reais (about 4.1 million euros) for pursuing litigation “in bad faith”.
Similar to ex-President Donald Trump in the United States, Bolsonaro also expressed unproven doubts about the reliability of the voting machines before the election. Bolsonaro’s supporters blocked the streets in protest at the results of the presidential election, and some called for a military coup. Bolsonaro was narrowly defeated by left-wing politician Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva.
Bolsonaro and the Liberal Party then claimed that older models of Brazil’s electronic ballot box had problems. Bolsonaro therefore submitted a 33-page formal objection to the Brazilian electoral authority. He blamed software bugs for the lost election and demanded that votes cast using the majority of the country’s electronic machines be invalidated. If only the votes cast for the new models counted, the conservative president would be re-elected with 51.05 percent of the votes, the party calculated.
Either check the elections – or accept the result
However, the court had declared that the same devices were used in both ballots. Therefore, the first ballot should also have been reviewed – putting the Liberal Party in a difficult position, since contesting the results of the first ballot would likely have affected the election of many of its members in Congress. However, after a 24-hour reflection period, the Liberal Party declined to extend the challenge to the first ballot, as required as a condition of considering the case.
Even though the lawsuit was ultimately dismissed by the electoral court, the allegations are buoyant for Bolsonaro’s most loyal supporters. Many of them continue to block highways across Brazil, repeating unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud and calling for military intervention.