RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Thousands of people demonstrated this Sunday (01) in Brazil supporting President Jair Bolsonaro and protesting against the electronic voting system in place since 1996.
In Rio de Janeiro, around 3,000 people marched along Copacabana beach, most of them dressed in yellow and green, the colors of the Brazilian flag.
“What we want is that the votes can be publicly recounted, that there is more transparency because there have already been suspicions of fraud,” Ronaldo Cavalcante, a 46-year-old man demonstrating in Rio, told AFP.
President Bolsonaro, who is seeking re-election in 2022, is not asking for a return to paper ballots but for a receipt to be printed after each vote in the electronic ballot box so that they can be physically recounted.
Some observers say that what the conservative leader is really doing is preparing the ground to challenge the outcome in the event of defeat, as former US President Donald Trump did last year.
Others wonder how one can be against such a proposal, which promises more security and should be easy to implement.
What can be said from today’s perspective is that everyone would be served by the introduction of a printed receipt. There would be an additional layer of security, and Bolsonaro would have no reason not to accept the election result.
But as a study published today shows, dealing with dissenters is one of the biggest challenges in Brazil in 2021. The dispute over printed ballots can serve as one of many examples of what is really ailing politics in this country.
The president did not participate directly in the demonstration, which also gathered several thousand people in Brasilia, but delivered a speech via videoconference. He reiterated that he would not accept elections that were not “clean and democratic.”
He added that he would “do whatever it takes” to ensure the printing of paper receipts for electronic voting.
He also addressed thousands of demonstrators gathered in São Paulo, the country’s largest city, in the afternoon.
“The will of the people must prevail. I hope that after this demonstration, this will become a fact in Brasília,” he declared, alluding to the vote scheduled Thursday in a legislative committee considering a bill seeking to approve the printing of paper receipts for electronic ballot boxes in 2022. Most observers expect the bill to be rejected by the committee.
FRAUD
On Thursday, during his weekly Facebook Live, the head of state spoke for more than two hours about his conviction that there was fraud in the last two presidential elections, claiming that he should have won in the first round in 2018.
Instead of seeking a compromise, however, the president’s opponents insist that there is no evidence of fraud, as if this rhetoric could solve the problem. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) asserts that the current system is completely transparent and that no irregularities have ever occurred.
The sitting President described as “imbecilic” the argument of TSE President Luis Roberto Barroso, who argued that printing paper receipts could expose the vote to “the manipulation risks of the past”.
“Strictly, electronic voting is theft! Voting with printed receipts is not complicated; people will adapt”, said meanwhile in one of the demonstrations this Sunday Roxana Guimaraes, a 45-year-old nurse.