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BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — More than 3 weeks aft losing a reelection bid, President Jair Bolsonaro connected Tuesday blamed a bundle bug and demanded the electoral authorization annul votes formed connected astir of Brazil’s nation’s physics voting machines, though autarkic experts accidental the bug doesn’t impact the reliability of results.
Such an enactment would permission Bolsonaro with 51% of the remaining valid votes — and a reelection victory, Marcelo de Bessa, the lawyer who filed the 33-page petition connected behalf of the president and his Liberal Party, told reporters.
The electoral authorization has already declared triumph for Bolsonaro’s nemesis, leftist erstwhile President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and adjacent galore of the president’s allies person accepted the results. Protesters successful cities crossed the state person steadfastly refused to bash the same, peculiarly with Bolsonaro declining to concede.
Liberal Party person Valdemar Costa and an auditor hired by the enactment told reporters successful Brasilia that their valuation recovered each machines dating from earlier 2020 — astir 280,000 of them, oregon astir 59% of the full utilized successful the Oct. 30 runoff — lacked idiosyncratic recognition numbers successful interior logs.
Neither explained however that mightiness person affected predetermination results, but said they were asking the electoral authorization to invalidate each votes formed connected those machines.
The ailment characterized the bug arsenic “irreparable non-compliance owed to malfunction” that called into question the authenticity of the results.
Immediately afterward, the caput of the electoral authorization issued a ruling that implicitly raised the anticipation that Bolsonaro’s ain enactment could endure from specified a challenge.
Alexandre de Moraes said the tribunal would not see the ailment unless the enactment offers an amended study wrong 24 hours that would see results from the archetypal electoral circular connected Oct. 2, successful which the Liberal Party won much seats successful some legislature houses than immoderate other.
The bug hadn’t been known previously, yet experts said it besides doesn’t impact results. Each voting instrumentality tin inactive beryllium easy identified done different means, similar its metropolis and voting district, according to Wilson Ruggiero, a prof of machine engineering and integer systems astatine the Polytechnic School of the University of Sao Paulo.
Diego Aranha, an subordinate prof of systems information astatine Aarhus University successful Denmark, who has participated successful authoritative information tests of Brazil’s electoral system, agreed.
“It does not undermine the reliability oregon credibility successful immoderate way,” Ruggiero told The Associated Press by phone. “The cardinal constituent that guarantees correctness is the integer signature associated with each voting machine.”
While the machines don’t person idiosyncratic recognition numbers successful their interior logs, those numbers bash look connected printed receipts that amusement the sum of each votes formed for each candidate, said Aranha, adding the bug was lone detected owed to the efforts by the electoral authorization to supply greater transparency.
Bolsonaro’s little than two-point nonaccomplishment to da Silva connected Oct. 30 was the narrowest margin since Brazil’s 1985 instrumentality to democracy. While the president hasn’t explicitly cried foul, helium has refused to concede defeat oregon congratulate his hostile — leaving country for supporters to gully their ain conclusions.
Many person been protesting relentlessly, making claims of predetermination fraud and demanding that the equipped forces intervene.
Dozens of Bolsonaro supporters gathered extracurricular the quality league connected Tuesday, decked retired successful the greenish and yellowish of Brazil’s emblem and chanting patriotic songs. Some verbally attacked and pushed journalists trying to participate the venue.
Bolsonaro spent much than a twelvemonth claiming Brazil’s physics voting system is prone to fraud, without ever presenting evidence.
Brazil began utilizing an physics voting strategy successful 1996 and predetermination information experts see specified systems little unafraid than hand-marked insubstantial ballots, due to the fact that they permission nary auditable insubstantial trail. But Brazil’s strategy has been intimately scrutinized by home and planetary experts who person ne'er recovered grounds of it being exploited to perpetrate fraud.
The Senate’s president, Rodrigo Pacheco, said Tuesday day that the predetermination results are “unquestionable.”
Bolsonaro has been astir wholly secluded successful the authoritative residence since his Oct. 30 defeat, inviting wide speculation arsenic to whether helium is dejected oregon plotting to cling to power.
In an interrogation with paper O Globo, Vice President Hamilton Mourão chalked up Bolsonaro’s lack to erysipelas, a tegument corruption connected his legs that helium said prevents the president from wearing pants.
But his his lad Eduardo Bolsonaro, a national lawmaker, has been much direct.
“We ever distrusted these machines. ... We privation a monolithic audit,” the younger Bolsonaro said past week astatine a league successful Mexico City. “There is precise beardown grounds to bid an probe of Brazil’s election.”
For its audit, the Liberal Party hired the Legal Vote Institute, a radical that has been captious of the existent system, saying it defies the instrumentality by failing to supply a integer grounds of each idiosyncratic vote.
In a separate study presented earlier this month, the Brazilian subject said determination were flaws successful the country’s electoral systems and projected improvements, but didn’t substantiate claims of fraud from immoderate of Bolsonaro’s supporters.
Analysts person suggested that the equipped forces, which person been a cardinal constituent of Bolsonaro’s administration, whitethorn person maintained a semblance of uncertainty implicit the contented to debar displeasing the president. In a consequent statement, the Defense Ministry stressed that portion it had not recovered immoderate grounds of fraud successful the ballot counting, it could not exclude that possibility.
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Biller reported from Rio de Janeiro. Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson successful Mexico City contributed to this report.
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