The president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Minister Alexandre de Moraes, decided to deny a request made yesterday (22) by the PL questioning votes in the second round of elections, held on October 30.
In the decision, Moraes countered the technical issues raised by President Jair Bolsonaro’s party. The minister said that the party did not amend alleged irregularities in the first round and did not present evidence to justify the establishment of an extraordinary verification of the calculation.
According to the minister, all ballot box models are identifiable by physical and electronic mechanisms. Moraes also stated that the argument that the secrecy of the vote was violated based on the registration of voters’ names in logs from the urn.
In the dispatch, the president also stated that it is “totally possible to trace electronic ballot boxes” and the arguments are “absolutely false”.
“The plaintiff’s total bad faith in her bizarre and illicit request, ostensibly offensive to the Democratic State of Law and carried out in an inconsequential manner with the purpose of encouraging criminal and anti-democratic movements that, even with serious threats and violence, have been obstructing several highways and roads throughout Brazil, was proven, both by the refusal to add the initial petition, and by the total absence of any evidence of irregularities and the existence of a totally fraudulent narrative of the facts”, stated Moraes.
In the same decision, Alexandre de Moraes condemned the Coligação Pelo Bem do Brasil, which supported Bolsonaro’s candidacy in this year’s elections, for bad-faith litigation and imposed a fine of R$ 22.9 million. It was also determined to suspend transfers from the Party Fund to the coalition until the payment of the fine.
Finally, the minister ordered the decision to be sent to the Electoral Justice internal affairs department so that the conduct of the President of the PL, Valdemar de Costa Neto, could be evaluated. The objective is to investigate the responsibility for the supposed “purpose of disturbing the Brazilian democratic regime”.
After Moraes’ dispatch, the PL informed in a note that the party had already contacted legal counsel to analyze the TSE’s decision. “The PL reiterates that it only followed what Article 51 of the Electoral Law provides, which obliges the parties to carry out an inspection of the electoral process”, says the note.
Understand
Yesterday, the PL filed with the TSE an electoral representation to question the result of the election and pointed to the alleged malfunction of ballot boxes in the second round as justification.
Then, Moraes gave 24 hours for the caption add to petition to present the list of supposedly defective ballot boxes in the two shifts. The Electoral Justice uses the same ballot boxes in both ballots.
This afternoon, the party asked that the application with scope only for the second round were maintained by the TSE.
In a press conference, the president of the PL, Valdemar Costa Neto, stated that the verification of possible errors was restricted to the second round due to “coincidence” or “technology”, since the contracted consultancy only verified the error in this stage of the election.
In the first round, the PL elected the largest group in the National Congress, with 99 deputies and 14 senators.
