Even without printed ballots, election is guaranteed in 2022, says Brazil’s VP

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil’s Vice President Hamilton Mourão said on Thursday (22) that even if the adoption of printed ballots for electronic ballot boxes is not approved by Congress, next year’s presidential election is guaranteed.

Mourão’s statement was made in the wake of a bombshell report published earlier in the day by daily newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, which reports that on July 8th, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (Progressives-AL), received a message from Defense Minister Walter Braga Netto, through an interlocutor, that there would be no elections in 2022 if there were no printed ballots.

“Of course there will be elections, who is going to forbid them? We are not a banana republic,” he added in a conversation with journalists upon arrival at the Vice Presidential offices.

Mourão said that Braga Netto denied that he had sent an emissary to warn him that there would be no election without the change in the current voting system.

At a disadvantage in the polls for reelection and targeted by an investigative committee (CPI) in the Senate, President Jair Bolsonaro has raised his support for printed ballots attached to electronic ballot boxes under a proposed constitutional amendment (PEC) being discussed in the Chamber of Deputies.

To journalists, the vice president tried to minimize the report by saying, for example, that he has known the defense minister for a long time and he is not a person to send messages.