Brazil’s electoral system has successfully used electronic voting since the 1990s. President Jair Bolsonaro’s “battle of wills” against the Superior Electoral Court regarding October’s electoral process may see a repeat of fraud accusations.

You will never be bored following Brazilian politics. Like a good Latin American novela (soap opera), there is no shortage of twists and turns, villains and heroes, tears of sorrow and laughter. This year’s season is especially exciting, as a presidential election looms on the horizon. The first round of voting is scheduled for early October, and the most likely result is a runoff between the two main contenders and bitter rivals: the incumbent, President Jair Bolsonaro, and the former president (2003-2010), Luis Inácio “Lula” da Silva.  But even before one gets into discussions of content or character of these or any other candidates, President Bolsonaro has picked a frontrunner topic in the controversy race: the voting system itself.

Since the country democratised in the mid-1980s, voting in Brazil has been compulsory for all citizens between 18 and 70 years of age. Adding the optional voting for 16- and 17-year-olds, and for those above 70, this means up to 150 million people are expected to vote this year. The massive number of voters, spread out in a country ten percent larger than Australia, and concerns over the process of counting votes led to the adoption of a modernised solution. In the mid-1990s, this resulted in the transition from paper ballots to an electronic voting system. The latter has been used almost without any issue for the past 20+ years. But “almost” is the key word here.

Despite being elected via the electronic ballot system, Bolsonaro has spent the past three and half years shouting to the winds his intense suspicion over the system’s safety. He was a strong supporter of a failed bill that would have reverted to voting with paper ballots, and he has made numerous allegations of electronic ballots being tampered with––none of which have been proven. It comes with no surprise that Bolsonaro is pre-emptively raising suspicions over the upcoming election. Adding to the easy parallels with former US President Donald Trump and his baseless claims of electoral fraud, Federal Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of the president’s sons, is extremely close to US alt-right figures such Steve Bannon and Jason Miller.

The most important institutional actor pushing back allegations against the electronic voting system is Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court. Beyond judging cases of electoral matters, its key attribution is management of the country’s entire federal electoral system. Three of this court’s members are serving members of the country’s Federal Supreme Court, and one of these three presides over the electoral court. This bureaucratic makeup matters because of Bolsonaro’s repeated public attacks towards the Supreme Court as an institution and practically all its individual members.

According to the president and his supporters, the judges are “out to get” him and his three sons currently holding office in legislative bodies – all being investigated for corruption-related charges. Time and again, Bolsonaro has portrayed the Supreme Court’s role not as natural part of a checks-and-balance structure, but rather as an undemocratic impediment to the “real” voice of Brazilians from being heard. In fact, the president indicated the idea of having the country’s armed forces – which are constitutionally under his purview – do a “parallel” vote counting.

In mid-April, the Superior Electoral Court put in place its own pre-emptive move to uphold the integrity of the election. It sent a series of invitations for foreign entities, including the European Union and the Organisation of American States, to come and observe Brazil’s election in October and reinforced its intent of welcoming any country interested in sending its own electoral observers. According to Brazilian news sources, the Electoral Court’s current presiding judge has been “weaving” a series of meetings with high-level international authorities of powerful countries, such as the US and Germany, to strengthen the pressure for a transparent and sound electoral process. None of these observers will have any direct involvement with the process itself and have no authorisation to intervene. Their role is to monitor and report.

The idea from this court seems to be showing Bolsonaro that “the world is watching” and that the political and economic consequences of coup-like actions would be dire if he was to tamper with the election or pull a loser Trump card and call fraud. There is no doubt that this is the first time in the post-dictatorship era that some in Brazil are genuinely concerned about the electoral process, not merely its results.

With five months to go between early May and the first voting day in October, too much can happen. And with it comes a myriad of surprises from Pandora’s daily unboxing. In the end, being a Brazilian in Australia means being constantly in the future, as Sydney lives 13-14 hours ahead of my hometown Fortaleza. Unfortunately, my crystal ball only reads “stay tuned for the next episode.”

Update: Less than 24 hours after this article was written, and just before it was ready to be published, news broke that the Superior Electoral Court “uninvited” the European Union to monitor the election. Apparently, Bolsonaro has instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to deny the necessary visas for EU representatives. This was followed by news that the Federal Senate will invite representatives from the European Parliament to observe the elections. As expected, a story to be continued…

Deborah Barros Leal Farias is a Senior Lecturer at UNSW Sydney, where she teaches Politics and International Relations. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of British Columbia and a BA in Law from University of Fortaleza.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.