The Liberal Party (PL), formation of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, announced this Saturday that it will challenge the use of older model electronic ballot boxes before the electoral courts.
The president of the PL, Valdemar Costa Neto, pointed out that his party does not want to ask for a repetition of the presidential elections on October 30, in which the progressive Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated Bolsonaro.
"We do not want to propose new elections. We do not want to shake up the life of the country (...) but the Superior Electoral Tribunal is going to have to see this and make a decision," Costa Neto said in statements to journalists.
The PL intends to present, until next Tuesday, a document before the Superior Electoral Court in which the use of ballot boxes of models prior to those manufactured from 2020 will be questioned, which represents about 61% of the total used In the elections.
As Costa Neto explained, the party commissioned a study in which it has been shown that the oldest ballot boxes cannot be audited due to technical problems.
Brazil has been using electronic ballot boxes since 1996, without any complaints of fraud ever being made, and has gradually been modernizing the models, introducing improvements in the equipment and computer programs they use.
In the 2022 elections, 577,125 ballot boxes of six different models were used, of which 352,126 correspond to models manufactured between 2009 and 2015, those questioned by Bolsonaro's party.
For months before the elections were held, the far-right leader led a smear campaign against the electoral system and, without any proof, has insistently defended that electronic ballot boxes are vulnerable to fraud.
The ballot boxes have been inspected by numerous agencies, including the Armed Forces, which oversaw the electoral process at Bolsonaro's request. In its report on the elections, the Armed Forces did not find any indication of fraud, but neither did they rule out the possibility that it may have been committed.
Bolsonaro has not publicly acknowledged his defeat or congratulated his rival, but he has allowed the transition to begin, which will culminate on January 1 with the inauguration of Lula.
Since the day after the elections, thousands of radical Bolsonaro supporters have demonstrated outside the barracks to openly incite a coup, asking the military to prevent Lula's inauguration and to "save Brazil."
