President of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Alexandre de Moraes, said that what happened in the recent presidential elections does not present any indication or evidence of fraud justifying the revaluation of part of the votes recorded in the ballot boxes, as the political coalition of the outgoing president wanted.
The president of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Alexandre de Moraes, has fined President Jair Bolsonaro’s party, the Liberal Party, more than four million dollars after the The outgoing president’s political party has called for the partial invalidation of the elections held last October.
According to Moraes, the performance of Bolsonaro’s party – which filed a petition questioning the reliability of 61% of the electronic ballot boxes used during the elections -, does not present any indication or proof of fraud justifying the re-evaluation of part of the votes cast at the polls .
For this reason, the magistrate sentenced the Liberal Party coalition to pay a fine of nearly 23 million Brazilian reais ($4.2 million) for “litigation in bad faith”.
Bolsonaro’s party action is based on a report by a private consulting firm commissioned by the Liberal Party which indicates that the president was the candidate who garnered the most votes in electronic ballot boxes made from 2020, the more recent, against ballot boxes bearing an old serial number, which “cannot be audited”.
The report indicates that 61% of the ballot boxes, or nearly 578,000, are of an older model which does not allow the votes recorded there to be reviewed, according to the G1 media.
However, the party did not include the first round of elections in the audit, saying it found no issues, a reason which led Moraes to classify the organization’s request as “strange”, “illegal” and made without consequence.
Moraes argued that the Liberal Party attempted “against the democratic rule of law” and used the request to “encourage criminal and anti-democratic movements”.
Similarly, the President of the TSE clarified that “it is not reasonable” to assert that the ballot boxes do not make it possible to track the votes. For Moraes, this argument could only have been raised out of ignorance or bad faith.
Lula prevailed over Bolsonaro in the second round of the presidential elections with 50.9% of the vote, against 49.1% for Bolsonaro.
Source: Latercera
