Brazil’s Electoral Court wants to investigate Bolsonaro for “attacking” electoral system

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The bickering does not stop in Brazil. The latest squabble comes this time from Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which on Monday, August 2, asked the Federal Supreme Court (STF) to investigate President Jair Bolsonaro for what it called a “smear campaign” against the current electronic voting system, whose infallibility the president dared to question.

There is great outrage among the judges. The full Electoral Tribunal voted unanimously to ask the STF to include Bolsonaro in a criminal case already underway involving disseminating so-called ‘false news’ and various attacks on democratic institutions through social networks.

The TSE also unanimously decided to “open its own administrative investigation” into whether the head of state has committed “an abuse of economic and political power, and abuse of the media, corruption, fraud, and/or behavior that is inadmissible toward public officials” through his constant attacks on electronic ballot boxes.

In recent weeks, Bolsonaro has increasingly expressed his doubts about the proclaimed infallibility of electronic ballot boxes. He sees the electronic-only ballot box, without a printed receipt, as a possible source of “fraud” and is pushing for Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to either reinstate paper voting or leave the electronic ballot box in place and introduce printed receipts as an additional layer of security.

But this is not appreciated by his opponents.

EVERYONE CALLS EVERYONE ANDI-DEMOCRATIC

The president of the TSE, Judge Luís Roberto Barroso, who had already stood out as an unwavering Bolsonaro critic at the Senate Covid CPI, also this time did not hesitate, and condemned the president’s stance Monday in the court’s first session after the end of the judicial vacation, calling his behavior “anti-democratic”.

Jair Bolsonaro countered the very same day, saying that “some call him undemocratic or even a dictator, but in fact, the only thing he really wants is to have clean elections, which he calls “the soul of democracy”, stressing that he wants to “avoid possible fraud next year.”

Some observers say that what the conservative leader is really doing is preparing the ground to challenge the election outcome 2022 in the event of defeat, as former US President Donald Trump did last year.

Others wonder how anyone can seriously oppose such a proposal (printed ballots or printed receipts), which promises greater security and could be easily implemented.

But as a study published a couple of days ago shows, dealing with dissenters is one of the biggest challenges in Brazil in 2021. The dispute over the electoral system, printed ballots, and printed receipts can serve as one of many examples of what is really ailing politics in this country.

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