Brazil’s Electoral Court Chief promises transparency committee, live broadcast of electronic ballot box tests

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Justice Luis Roberto Barroso reiterated the reliability of electronic ballot boxes and said the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) will broadcast live the device’s checking tests to increase interaction with civil society and put an end to the distrust “artificially created in a minority of the population.”

The current TSE Chief Judge, Barroso also addressed journalists late Sunday (12) about the creation of a commission with computer experts, members of civil society and public institutions – including the Armed Forces – to monitor the 2022 presidential elections and its verification. The statements were made after the integrity test of ballot boxes drawn in supplementary elections held in four Brazilian cities on Sunday.

Asked about Bolsonaro’s attacks against him and his STF peers, Barroso said he would only answer institutional questions related to the procedure conducted by the TSE. “I address personal questions with the sheer indifference they warrant,” he said.

“As the TSE has tried to demonstrate, the system is absolutely safe, it has been in use since 1996 and has never registered any type of fraud. However, the fact is that a degree of distrust has been created, at least artificially, in a minority of the population,” he said, commenting indirectly on Bolsonarists’ arguments.

The Judge said that institutions must therefore be “responsive” and increase the level of interaction with society. He recalled that there are voting ballot box tests “before, during and after” voting.

“We will also have an election transparency commission comprised of computer science professors. We will be introducing state-of-the-art computing in academia to monitor every step of the electoral process. In addition to members of civil society and public institutions. There will be representatives from the Federal Audit Court, the Prosecutor General’s Office, a Federal Police expert, a representative from the Armed Forces and from the National Congress,” he detailed.

Barroso also downplayed suspicions raised about potential fraud in data transmission from the electronic ballot boxes to the TRE or TSE systems. He recalled that these systems are encrypted and internal, and that the ballot box is never networked, which prevents hacking into the device. The voting data is stored on a flash drive, which in turn transfers it to the central system. The data transmitted can be compared to the ballot paper, a kind of booklet printed by the machine itself with its results at the end of the polling station activities.

“It is fantasy, fiction, a misconception that there can be fraud in this transfer [of ballot box data to the TSE]. And, even if there were, the result is what is on the printed ballot paper [at the polling stations at 5 PM], which candidates can check,” he said.

Asked about threats to impeach Supreme Court Justices, Barroso said that this “is not a matter for him to comment.” “There is a specific disciplinary procedure in the legislation and it is up to the Senate to appreciate if that [comes to] happen. I am a judge, I deal with facts and evidence, and I don’t work with political speculation,” he said.

At the end of the interview, the Justice indirectly criticized Bolsonaro’s political group and thanked the work of the professional press.

“People can have whatever opinion they want, but they do not have the right to distort facts or lie about them to conform to their views. A premise of the civilized world is that we work with the truth, the possible truth in a plural world. The truth has no owner, but deliberate lying does, and we need to tackle it. And the professional press is the great weapon for this,” he said.

This Sunday’s integrity tests, concurrent with voting, were conducted in ballot boxes used in the municipalities of Silva Jardim and Santa Maria Madalena, in Rio de Janeiro. Electors in these locations yesterday voted to elect new mayors and deputy mayors, because the 2020 election was pending court decisions and the winners had not been sworn in.

Elections also took place in the municipalities of Campo Grande, in Alagoas, and Gado Bravo, in Paraíba, but without tests.

In the integrity test, the superior or regional courts draw lots for ballot boxes that have been distributed on the morning of the election. These ballot boxes are replaced and taken to the court headquarters where they are checked. The Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) and political parties send in filled-out mock ballots.

A clerk at the receiving court collects them in a canvas ballot box, the old-fashioned way, until other clerks type these votes into the electronic ballot box. Finally, the physical counting results are compared with the electronic ballot box results. The whole process is filmed to ensure that any faults can be verified.

For each election, this process involves some 100 ballot boxes across the country, with an average of 430 votes each. In the case of Silva Jardim, there were 320 votes.