The general in the reserve who directs the Brazilian Ministry of Defense, Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, has sent an official urgent communication to the electoral authorities in which he demands access for the Armed Forces to the source code of the electronic ballot boxes, that is, to the secret codes that make them work and then count the votes. The request, made on Monday, has been known this Tuesday. The request shows the growing —and hitherto unprecedented— involvement of the Armed Forces in the supervision of the voting system that Brazil adopted a quarter of a century ago and that the president, Jair Bolsonaro, systematically questions on suspicion of fraud.
Minister Nogueira’s request to the Superior Electoral Court bears the stamp of “very urgent.” The military officially ask to have access between August 2 and 12 to secret information that, in any case, they have been able to consult for months, according to the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. The campaign officially starts on August 16. In June, the military already reviewed the system and demanded a series of technical information, when during the last decades their participation in the elections has been to collaborate in the logistics so that every Brazilian could vote.
Exactly two months after Brazil votes in the closest elections in recent times, the information on the technical details of the electronic ballot boxes and their security share the limelight in the public debate with a manifesto in favor of democracy (and indirectly against the Bolsonaro’s coup speech) signed by the main bankers in the country, along with a broad representation of business and society, in total, more than 600,000 people.
The Armed Forces have been able to consult the source code and other technical details at the headquarters of the electoral court in Brasilia since last October because they are one of the institutions that oversee the upcoming elections. Other organizations with the same power are the Federal Police, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Bar Association or the electoral Party and the political formations that attend, including Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party.
The first electoral round is scheduled for October 2 and, if the panorama does not change radically, it will be a one-on-one between Lula da Silva and Bolsonaro. The founder of the Workers’ Party (PT) enjoys a solid advantage among the electorate, according to multiple polls. He shows how polarized Brazil is is that two-thirds of voters say they have already decided their vote. If no one gets half plus one, a second round will be held on October 28.
Bolsonaro has been engaged in a campaign for more than a year to sow doubts about the ability of the voting system to detect possible fraud, an issue for which he recently summoned the accredited diplomatic corps in Brasilia. It is an old speech in the repertoire of the veteran Bolsonaro. But now that it has acquired an enormous political dimension and impact, it stirs doubts from the Presidency of the Republic and because Donald Trump and the Republicans have managed to make it penetrate among millions of Americans.big lie despite the fact that the courts did not see irregularities in the elections that the tycoon lost.
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The far-right demands that voters receive a printed receipt of the vote issued by electronic means, a possibility that the Brazilian Congress rejected a few months ago.
Electronic ballot boxes were a source of pride for Brazilians until Bolsonaro made them the object of a smear campaign. Now it is one more dividing element in political polarization. It is enough to ask about the voting system to know if one is inclined to vote for Bolsonaro or Lula. To dispel any doubt, the Electoral Court invited the uniformed officers to a process of auditing the hackers involved in trying to break the system (an endeavor in which the hackers they fail in every election).
Until now, military participation in Brazilian elections was limited to taking electronic ballot boxes to the most remote corners of the country and starring in the preferred print to illustrate the elections in the press of much of the world.
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