Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s lawyers filed an election complaint on Nov. 22, calling upon the country’s electoral authority to invalidate all votes cast on more than half of the electronic voting machines. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party questioned the results of the Oct. 30 runoff election over what they called an “irreparable non-compliance due to malfunction,” claiming that nearly 280,000 voting machines of an older model were missing identification numbers in internal logs.
Over the past weekend, radicals in the Bolsonaro apparatus also started blocking major highways again, demanding the election results be overturned, and calling for federal intervention—a military coup—should the courts not overturn “the communists” taking power with Lula da Silva. The state of Mato Grosso, in Brazil’s agricultural heartland, is a hotbed of these actions. Led by truckers and fomented by big ag interests, over a dozen sections of highways were reported shut down by Nov. 20. A state newspaper reported some of the protesters are armed, spreading oil on the highways, in some cases or forcibly dumping out the cargo of trucks trying to use the highways.
The motion filed by lead Liberal Party lawyer Marcelo de Bessa claimed that if all the votes on the identified voting machines were annulled, Bolsonaro would win reelection with 51% of the remaining valid votes. The Superior Electoral Court countered by giving the Liberal Party 24 hours to file an amended report, which had to include a full audit also of results from the Oct. 2 first round election, carried out on the same voting machines now being challenged. In those elections, Bolsonaro’s party beat all competitors in both congressional houses.
