The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) ordered the exclusion of the Armed Forces from the list of bodies that oversee the electronic voting system. The military, however, will continue to provide voter security at some polling locations and transport electronic voting machines to remote locations.
The decision was presented by Minister Alexandre de Moraes, president of the court, and unanimously approved by his peers. “The participation of the Armed Forces in the list of entities monitoring the electronic voting system and also in the Electoral Transparency Commission was not necessary, reasonable and efficient,” said Moraes.
“It has been demonstrated, as we have all seen, that it is absolutely incompatible with the constitutional and legal functions of the Armed Forces to also be on the list of supervisory entities”, stated the minister.
:: TSE responds to new military attack against electronic voting machines: system is safe ::
The objective is to avoid clashes with the military, which acted controversially in last year’s presidential elections. After the second round, the then Minister of Defense, Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, sent letters to the TSE with questions about the election, with the justification of seeking to improve the voting system.
The ministry even sent a report to the Electoral Court that attested that there was no non-conformity in the vote counting process, but “did not exclude the possibility of fraud or inconsistency in the electronic voting machines”.
In the 62-page document, the military speculates about possible vulnerabilities of the ballot boxes, saying that “it is not possible to state that the electronic voting system is free from the influence of possible malicious code that could alter its functioning.”
The report suggests that a commission be urgently created, made up of “renowned technicians from society and technicians representing supervisory entities”, to investigate possible vulnerabilities. The document, in this sense, gave Bolsonaro ammunition to intensify attacks on the electoral process.
Editing: Vivian Virissimo
