Bolsonaro Challenges Brazil Election, Wants Votes Cast on Most of the Nation’s Voting Machines Invalidated

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is challenging his election loss last month to leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, arguing in a complaint that votes from most electronic voting machines should be “invalidated” due to a software bug.

Bolsonaro’s right-wing electoral coalition filed the complaint in Brazil’s federal electoral court (TSE) after its audit of the vote count found “irreparable non-compliance due to malfunction” in older voting machines.

“There were signs of serious failures that generate uncertainties and make it impossible to validate the results generated” in several older models of the voting machines, Bolsonaro’s allies said in their complaint. As a result, they urged that the votes from those models should be “invalidated.”

Valdemar Costa Neto, President of Bolsonaro’s PL party, and an auditor hired by the party told reporters in Brasilia that their audit found all machines dating from 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2015—about 59 percent of the total used in the Oct. 30 runoff— lacked individual identification numbers in internal logs, and should be voided.

Da Silva appeared to win the second round of voting on October 30, 2022, spurring massive protests throughout the country.

According to Reuters, the above represents “a small but...

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