Brazil: Electoral Committee Rejects Jair Bolsonaro Demand to Invalidate Votes, Overturn Elections

Outgoing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro publicly rejected the results of the recent Brazilian presidential elections, where he lost to leftist rival, Lula. He recently tried a legal path to invalidate the votes, but this was shot down by Brazil's Electoral Committee.

Last Wednesday, Bolsonaro's Liberal party held a press conference with party president Valdemar Costa and lawyer Marcelo de Bessa. They presented their arguments that thousands of ballots should have been invalidated because of a glitch in the system. However, they presented no evidence that this glitch could affect the results. If invalidated, this would erase much of the votes for Lula and hand Bolsonaro the win.

Supreme Court Justice and Electoral Committee head Alexandre de Moraes previously issued a ruling that raised a possibility that the Liberal party could also suffer from such a ruling, as he requested an amended report to include results from the first electoral round, which saw Bolsonaro's party win more seats in both congressional houses. The Justice set a 24-hour deadline, but the party could not produce any amended report.

Justice de Moraes wrote in his decision that this request showed the "complete bad faith of the plaintiff's bizarre and illicit request."

According to CNN, de Moraes also ordered the suspension of government funds for the Liberal Party's coalition until they paid a fine worth 23 million reais for bad faith litigation.

Jair Bolsonaro and the Liberal Party's Attempt to Invalidate Ballots Lacked Evidence

The Liberal Party filed a 33-page request to invalidate several votes and cited a software glitch in most of Brazil's machines. It stated that these machines lacked individual identification numbers in their internal logs, and because of this, all votes cast on those machines should be nullified.

According to the Associated Press, this would give Bolsonaro 51% of the votes, thus winning the first round and not needing a run-off.

Liberal party leaders Costa and de Bessa could not explain how this would affect election results, and election consultants told the Associated Press that the bug could not affect the results anyway. As such, de Moraes pointed out that the petitioners had a "total absence of any evidence of irregularities and the existence of a totally fraudulent narrative of the facts."

Electoral Committee Says Jair Bolsonaro Inciting Supporters

The complaint itself was a long shot, and Justice de Moraes stated that this stunt by the Liberal party may have been to rile up his supporters even more and push the narrative that the elections were stolen.

Al Jazeera reported that in his statement to reject the motion, he wrote that the claims of election inaccuracy were made "with the purpose of encouraging criminal and anti-democratic movements."

Protests regarding the elections are still happening around Brazil, with Bolsonaro supporters claiming that their candidate won the election. Bolsonaro has yet to concede and is still spreading false claims that the elections are stolen. Fears that he may instigate a coup and remain in power are still up in the air.

READ MORE: Brazil Election Results: Jair Bolsonaro Breaks Silence on Loss to Lula, But Did Not Concede Defeat

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Rick Martin

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