In a scathing rebuke to President Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s lower house of Congress rejected a Bolsonaro-backed bill seeking to add paper ballots to the country’s all-digital election system.
The defiant vote took place amid saber-rattling by the Brazilian military, which paraded tanks in the streets of the capital city of Brasilia, reminiscent of the country’s military dictatorship from 1964-1985.
Senator Simone Tebet decried the show of force, saying that “tanks in the street, precisely on the day of the vote on the paper ballot amendment, is real, clear and unconstitutional intimidation.”
The proposed amendment died after failing to muster the 308 votes needed to pass, getting only 229 yes votes and 218 no votes.
Earlier, Bolsonaro launched a blistering attack on the voting system, calling it susceptible to fraud, without citing evidence. He warned that elections will not be held next year “if they are not clean and democratic.”
Brazil’s electronic voting system has been in use by the country in all elections, plebiscites, and referendums since 2006, including the 2016 polls which swept Bolsonaro into power.
The populist president is demanding for the adoption of a hybrid system using printed ballots that can be counted in case of disputes. Critics, however, fear that this regression to a manual system would undermine the credibility of the existing all-electronic system.
Critics are wary of Bolsonaro’s motives, suspecting that the sweeping and unsubstantiated claims are laying the grounds for claims of fraud in case the incumbent loses. The 66-year-old president’s popularity is at a record low and is in danger of losing to left leaning Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is topping the surveys.
Observers are finding similarities between Bolsonaro’s move to that of former US President Donald Trump, who months before the elections in November 2020 had claimed in speeches, tweets, and interviews that he would be cheated, in case he lost.
The Brazilian Congress’ vote comes on the heels of a strongly-worded statement issued by a group of current and former judges warning of chaos if Brazil goes back to its manual counting of 150 million printed ballots.
Bolsonaro has been drawing flak for his anemic pandemic response which has resulted in Brazil registering the second-highest number of deaths in the world.
