Brazil’s PSDB hires new company to develop voting app after Sunday’s suspension

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The PSDB party has decided to hire a new company to complete the voting system for its presidential preliminaries.

On Sunday, the party was forced to suspend the process of choosing its candidate for the presidency after a series of glitches in the app developed by the Support Foundation of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Faurgs), hired to provide the service.

Relatasoft has now been chosen to supply the new app, called D. Voto, provided the new system passes the “stress test” to which it will be submitted. The company is part of the Superior Electoral Court’s (TSE) Elections of the Future Project.

The plan now is to resume voting as soon as possible. But in addition to technical adjustments, the new date hinges on political negotiations between candidates. São Paulo governor João Doria, Rio Grande do Sul governor Eduardo Leite, and the former mayor of Manaus Arthur Virgílio are contesting the prelims.

According to PSDB leaders, the Faurgs technicians failed to provide convincing explanations for the problem surrounding the voting tool, nor did they offer safe solutions for continuing to participate in the prelims. The app cost approximately R$1.5 million (US$270,000).

“The PSDB was victim of a technical issue in the prelims to choose its candidate for the presidency of the Republic and is looking for a way to resume them. Among the possibilities, there is a company that will be submitted to the stress test by all candidacies. More alternatives are under consideration. No diagnosis of what happened has yet been presented by the Foundation for Support to the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Faurgs), developer of the app that presented flaws. The most important aspect is to guarantee the votes of affiliates who are already registered. The votes that have already been registered in the ballot box and in the app are valid and will be computed,” PSDB said in an official statement.

The change of companies is likely to lead to more accusations among the PSDB candidates. Doria and Virgílio are aligned and endorse the app’s prompt replacement. On the other hand, Eduardo Leite has raised obstacles to the change of the voting platform. Since the beginning, Leite, from the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, has favored the use of the app developed by Faurgs, the federal university in the same state.

Whatever the outcome, PSDB has raised questions of its competence in managing the voting process and now sees a deepening of its political division, between Doria and Leite supporters.