Brazilian electoral high court amends rules for the control of electronic ballot boxes

The ministers of the Brazilian Superior Electoral Court (TSE) unanimously approved Tuesday (Sept. 20) the amendments to the resolution regulating the procedures for monitoring and auditing the electronic voting system.

The initiative comes in response to a request from the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) and political parties.

According to the president of the TSE and rapporteur of the case, Minister Alexandre de Moraes, procedures already carried out by the electoral justice system were added to the text even before they appeared in the resolution.

“We have accepted the demands of the technical control section to facilitate the control itself and bring more transparency to the elections. What the technical section has already done internally is now in the resolution,” Moraes said.

BIOMETRIC VERIFICATION

In light of pressure to increase transparency and questions about the security of electronic ballot boxes, the TSE has agreed to make minor changes to the voting system’s security procedures.

On Tuesday (Sept. 13), a proposal for biometric evaluation in the integrity verification of electronic ballot boxes was approved.

Voters will be asked to activate the ballot box with biometric data. The test will use between 32 and 64 ballot boxes. Voters are not required to participate.

Integrity tests have been conducted since 2002, always on Election Day.

The goal is to verify that the vote cast matches the one registered. 640 ballot boxes are used for this purpose. The difference in 2022 is that some will also be tested biometrically.

The change was made at the suggestion of the armed forces.

RELIABILITY

A survey conducted by PoderData from Sept. 11 to 13, 2022, shows that 1 in 3 voters believe that vote counting in Brazil is not secure.

The 31% rate is down five percentage points since the end of May, the second to last time PoderData asked respondents this question.

The group of those who trust the electoral system is now at 56%.

It showed the smallest fluctuations since January. Since then, the electorate has moved back and forth between the group that does not think the count is specific and the group that does not know how to answer.

With information from Poder360