Brazil’s armed forces present an election audit Wednesday: pressure loaded to bursting point

After the private report that revealed a series of “anomalies” in last Sunday’s elections, it is now the Defense Ministry’s turn to present its own audit.

Today, Monday, Nov. 7, the government of Jair Bolsonaro announced that on Wednesday, the Ministry of Defense would present its own audit of the presidential runoff elections held last Sunday, Oct. 30.

The preliminary election results were announced within hours, thanks to Brazil’s fast but opaque electronic voting system.

The result was close but clear: former president and convicted felon Lula da Silva was elected with 50.8% of the vote.

However, allegations of missing votes and dubious maneuvering by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) prompted a group of private investigators under the name #BrazilWasStolen to produce a report using public data from the electoral process that revealed irregularities in the vote.

The group had to present its analysis from Argentina with the help of a political consultant and journalist, Fernando Cerimedo.

In Brazil, the president of the TSE, leftist Alexandre de Moraes, has forbidden the contestation of the result under threat of imprisonment, does not deny a priori that there was fraud, but calls on the TSE to investigate and explain these anomalies.

Instead of publishing a response to the issues raised in the report, the TSE decided to download the public database used by the group and re-publish it the next day with some changes to the entries.

Now it is the turn of the Defense Ministry, which is highly respected in Brazil and has an impeccable record in Brazilian political history, to present its own audit of the electoral process.

Suppose this report also questions the election results or at least raises anomalies such as the #BrazilWasWtolen study.

In that case, the TSE will have to provide a concrete answer because the armed forces cannot be threatened with jail.

Judge Moraes said that those who do not accept the preliminary election results “will be treated like criminals and have to take responsibility.”

So far, Jair Bolsonaro has not commented on these private reports. He has only thanked the 59 million voters and asked his protesters not to block the streets.

The president reportedly met Monday morning with his defense minister, Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, and a technical team from the armed forces.

He was presented with the report, which will be made public Wednesday when it is officially handed over to the TSE.

There is no background on what could happen if discrepancies are found between the result of the audit by the Armed Forces and the result of the quick count certified by the Electoral Court.

Some speculate that the elections could be annulled and a new process initiated. In contrast, others maintain that such a thing would never happen as long as the ‘head of the gang’, Alexandre de Moraes, is still in office.

The closest thing in Latin America was in the 2019 elections in Bolivia when the Bolivian Electoral Tribunal could no longer hide Evo Morales’ blatant fraud to avoid a second round against his opponent Carlos Mesa, and the armed forces demanded a repeat of the electoral process.

With information from Derecha Diario