Brazilian president advocates constitutional changeover to printed ballots for 2022 elections

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – President Jair Bolsonaro said on Thursday that there will be no election in 2022 in Brazil if Congress passes a constitutional amendment validating the printed ballot, unless ballots are printed. He added harsh criticism of the president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Justice Luis Roberto Barroso, who defends electronic voting.

In his weekly live stream on social media, Bolsonaro quoted an excerpt from a recent interview given by Barroso in which the magistrate said that it would be “chaos” to implement printed ballots. Bolsonaro ironically referred to the president of the TSE as “owner of the world,” “man of absolute truth” and that “he can not be challenged.”

“No one accepts this vote anymore, how are you going to say that it’s accurate, it’s legal, it’s fair and it’s not rigged? We’re the only republic in the world, I think maybe the only one, that accepts this electronic voting crap, this must be changed,” he said.

“And I’ll tell you something else, if the Brazilian Parliament, by a qualified majority, three-fifths of the vote in the House and Senate, passes and enacts it, we will have printed ballots in 2022, and that’s that. I’m not even going to say anything more. There will be printed ballots, because if there are no printed ballots, then there will be no elections. I think the message has been given,” he said.

Bolsonaro said that the advocates of democracy, who want the vote to “really count,” should be in favor of adopting the measure to ensure that the vote is auditable. He congratulated the president of the Constitution and Justice Committee of the Chamber, Bia Kicis (PSL-DF), and the president of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), for proceeding with a proposed amendment to the Constitution in this respect.

Despite presenting no evidence, the president has repeatedly said that the 2018 elections – held using the electronic voting system in place since 1994 – were rigged and that otherwise, he would have won in the first round.

Since then, Bolsonaro has been advocating the adoption of an electronic vote in which there is a printed voucher afterward to ensure it is auditable, despite the fact that Brazil has one of the world’s most secure voting systems, according to experts.

The president insinuated that those against the adoption of the printed vote might be afraid of the voting result, sarcastically saying that they might believe in “Santa Claus” or that they would have an interest in benefiting from the result.

With information from reuters/brb