Status: 11.23.2022 02:15
Jair Bolsonaro has not yet publicly admitted his defeat in the Brazilian presidential elections. His party has now appealed the result. He claims to have discovered flaws in some voting machines.
About three weeks after the runoff, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s party, PL, filed a complaint against the result. It requires the electoral authority to invalidate most votes cast on electronic voting machines. The Partido Liberal cited a software glitch which, according to independent experts, had no impact on the reliability of the election results.
PL leader Costa explained at a press conference why the party filed a complaint.
Image: AP
The electoral authorities have already proclaimed Bolsonaro’s opponent, the left-wing former head of state Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the winner of the late October runoff. He defeated the right-wing incumbent with 50.9 percent of the votes, Bolsonaro got 49.1 percent. It was the closest result in a presidential race since Brazil’s return to democracy in 1985. Even a number of Bolsonaro’s allies have now accepted the outcome, and he himself has yet to publicly admit defeat.
PL talks about “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 ballot, had “malfunctioned.” These “malfunctions” would have prevented Bolsonaro’s re-election. According to a tally by the PL, if the votes from these voting machines had been nullified, Bolsonaro would have won the election with 51.05%.
The head of the Supreme Electoral Court, Alexandre de Moraes, immediately ordered that the court not consider the application until Bolsonaro’s party submits a revised application within 24 hours, which also included the results of the first round of elections in the 2nd October. In the first round, the Partido Liberal won more seats in both houses of Congress than any other party.
