More than three weeks after the presidential election in Brazil, the party of President Jair Bolsonaro, who was voted out, lodged a complaint against the election results. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL) on Tuesday asked the Supreme Electoral Court to invalidate all votes cast using more than 280,000 voting machines. The PL claimed that “malfunctions” of these machines prevented Bolsonaro from being re-elected.
According to Bolsonaro’s party, the alleged “malfunctions” in five voting machine models were proven in a test report commissioned by the party. 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.
According to the official election result, Bolsonaro only got 49.1 percent in the runoff. The left-leaning Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva narrowly won the election with 50.9 percent.
Responding to the complaint, the President of the Supreme Electoral Court, Alexandre de Moraes, said the contested voting machines were not only used in the run-off election, but also in the first round of voting on October 2nd. The complaint must therefore relate to both ballots, otherwise it will be rejected without examination.
Bolsonaro initially did not comment on his election defeat. Only two days later did the right-wing extremist signal his willingness for a peaceful handover of power to Lula, without explicitly admitting his defeat.
