President Jair Bolsonaro’s appeal to have the results of the presidential election in October overturned was denied by Brazil’s electoral court, which also fined his coalition, the Liberal Party, significantly for the departing leader’s “bad faith” in contesting the election.
A Supreme Court justice and the head of the Superior Electoral Court, Alexandre de Moraes, rendered a decision against Bolsonaro on Wednesday after the president requested that thousands of votes be thrown out on the grounds that some electronic voting machines were vulnerable to fraud during the election last month.
Despite the fact that the same voting machines were used in the first round of the election, the court initially stated that it would only consider Bolsonaro’s claims if he and his Liberal Party provided a more thorough audit of votes; however, de Moraes claimed that they had not done so.
The judge wrote in his decision that “the total lack of any evidence of irregularities and the existence of a totally fraudulent narrative of the facts” demonstrated “the complete bad faith of the plaintiff’s bizarre and illicit request…
De Moraes also demanded a probe into Liberal Party head Valdemar Costa and the suspension of all government support to the Liberal group until it pays a 23 million reai ($4.3 million) fine for their “poor faith” assertions.
In a 33-page appeal, attorneys for Bolsonaro claimed that hundreds of thousands of outdated machines lacked identifying numbers in their internal records and that the majority of the voting machines used in the election were experiencing a “malfunction.” De Moraes denied their plea, claiming that the attorneys failed to show how a technical flaw would have impacted the outcome of the election.
With 49.1% of the vote to Lula’s 50.9%, Bolsonaro narrowly lost the October 30 run-off election to the former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a leftist politician better known to many Brazilians as “Lula.” Days of disorderly protests around Brazil were started by the race, with protesters blocking numerous major roads and even at one point calling for a military coup. Although significant demonstrations have continued in certain locations, Bolsonaro subsequently encouraged his followers to stop doing such activities.
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