Bolsonaro Wages Trumpian Campaign to Sow Doubts About Voting

[Judi Lynn]

President demands a paper trail despite no evidence of fraud, mimicking leaders worldwide who have attacked their democratic systems

By Simone Preissler Iglesias and Andrew Rosati
July 11, 2021, 11:32 AM CDT

Brazil’s election is 15 months away, but President Jair Bolsonaro warns almost daily of cheating, chicanery and hacking.

With his popularity plummeting amid a criminal investigation over vaccine purchases, Bolsonaro has mimicked former President Donald Trump by laying groundwork to dispute a defeat. The far-right president and his congressional allies are pushing a bill in congress, which can go to a committee vote as early as this week, requiring the nation’s 470,000 voting machines to generate a paper record of each ballot. Otherwise, Bolsonaro says, hidden actors could manipulate the results.

Electoral authorities warn that changing a 21-year-old electronic system that experts call accurate and efficient could make citizens distrust their own democracy -- and introduce opportunities for real fraud.

“Electronic ballots were created to solve the biggest problem in Brazilian democracy, which had always been electoral fraud,” Supreme Court Justice Luis Roberto Barroso, who heads Brazil’s Electoral Court, said in an interview. “Those who criticize Brazil’s system either forgot how it was in the past or weren’t born yet.”



Jair Bolsonaro gives a thumbs up to members of the media before casting his electronic vote during the first round of presidential elections in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, Oct. 7, 2018Photographer: Dado Galdieri/Bloomberg

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-11/bolsonaro-wages-trumpian-campaign-to-sow-doubts-about-voting