If the result is annulled, Jair Bolsonaro would be left with 51% of the remaining valid votes|Palácio do Planalto|CC BY 2.0
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro filed an appeal and demanded the electoral authority annul votes cast on most electronic voting machines in the country that were used in the latest presidential election.
Bolsonaro blamed a software bug in the machines for his loss to former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the October election.
Marcelo de Bessa, the lawyer who filed the 33-page request for the current President and his Liberal Party, told reporters, “Annulment of votes in most of the voting machines would leave Bolsonaro with 51% of the remaining valid votes — and a reelection victory.”
However, Alexandre de Moraes, the Supreme Court justice who leads the electoral authority ruled that Bolsonaro’s right-wing electoral coalition must present their complete audit, including the results, for both rounds of last month’s election within 24 hours. Otherwise, the court would reject the request.
The Liberal Party leader Valdemar Costa told reporters that nearly 280,000 voting machines lacked individual identification numbers in internal logs. However, experts say the bug doesn’t affect the reliability of the results.
More than three weeks after losing the reelection, Bolsonaro and his supporters didn’t concede, even though many politicians and international allies acknowledged Lula’s victory.