RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Monday (1) strongly opposed electronic voting. If the system is retained in the 2022 elections, he said, the country would go the way of Venezuela or Argentina.
“In 2019, I was in Argentina warning about what would happen if the São Paulo Forum [Puebla Group] returned to power,” Bolsonaro said of the organization that unites Latin American leftist parties and includes Alberto Fernández.
“Now, the Argentine elite is already leaving the country. After that, the middle class and the poor will migrate, as is happening in Venezuela,” and this is due to “false, populist, demagogic elections that sell illusions and promise paradises,” he explained.
According to Bolsonaro, a “fraud” in favor of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is being prepared for the 2022 elections in Brazil.
“I repeat publicly. We need clean, democratic, and audited elections,” otherwise, “we will all pay the bill,” he said.
“Some accuse me of being a dictator, but I want clean elections, which are the soul of democracy,” he said, stressing that he only wants to “avoid fraud next year.”
President Bolsonaro, who is seeking re-election in 2022, is not asking for a return to paper ballots but for a receipt to be printed after each vote in the electronic ballot box so that they can be physically recounted.
Some observers say that what the conservative leader is really doing is preparing the ground to challenge the outcome in the event of defeat, as former US President Donald Trump did last year.
Others wonder how one can be against such a proposal, which promises more security and could be easy to implement.
What can be said from today’s perspective is that everyone would be served by the introduction of a printed receipt. There would be an additional layer of security, and Bolsonaro would have no reason not to accept the election result.
But as a study published yesterday shows, dealing with dissenters is one of the biggest challenges in Brazil in 2021. The dispute overprinted ballots can serve as one of many examples of what is really ailing politics in this country.
He reiterated that he would not accept elections that were not “clean and democratic”. He added that he would “do whatever it takes” to ensure the printing of paper receipts for electronic voting.
Apart from the debate initiated by Bolsonaro, the final decision is in the hands of Parliament, where the bill for the reintroduction of paper ballots is being considered in a committee of the Chamber of Deputies.