The outgoing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro filed a complaint Tuesday with the electoral court claiming the result of the recent presidential election was invalid on account of "malfunctioning" ballot boxes.
The filing claimed that ballot box models UE2009, UE2010, UE2011, UE2013 and UE2015 were reported to have been "malfunctioning" during Election Day. In total, the claim alleges that over 350,000 votes registered by the specified ballot boxes were invalid.
It's worth noting that the amount of ballots being refuted by the Bolsonaro camp would effectively give him the winning ticket for the October runoff election.
The findings submitted to Brazil's Supreme Electoral Court were audited by the Institute of Legal Vote; however, the documents presented before the court did not include an audit of the voting machines used during the first round of the election. The same ballot boxes used during the second round were used in the first round of voting in early October.
Alexandre de Moraes, the lead justice of the electoral court, has ordered Bolsonaro and company to submit its full account for both election rounds within the next 24 hours, noting that the complaint would be vacated if the deadline was not met.
Bolsonaro, 67, was first elected as president of Brazil in 2019 after leaving the Social Liberal Party of Brazil but not before he converted it into a nationalist, economically liberal, and socially conservative party. His second presidential bid came to an end after being bested by President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 76, who was president of Brazil from 2003 until 2010, and is a member of, as well as the former president of the Worker's Party (PT).
Lula's win against Bolsonaro was slim, with Bolsonaro winning 49% of the votes (58.2 million) compared to Lula's 50.9% (60.3 million).
The outgoing president has failed to publicly concede defeat to his opponent and has previously made unfounded claims about electoral fraud while his supporters protest in the streets. Bolsonaro's filing to invalidate votes in the 2022 election, which seems unlikely to get far, has added fuel to fears that he will not transition his power peacefully to Lula, his leftist opponent.
Lula's victory has already been ratified by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) and acknowledged by other leading politicians and international allies, including US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin