That was the most radical expression of declining trust in voting systems around the world. His son, Flavio, a senator, is running for president in the October election. In March, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a right-wing gathering held this year in Dallas, Flavio claimed that he would win the election if it were “free and fair”, suggesting that any other results would show that they were not. Several other Trump-supporting attendees also spread false rumors about malfunctioning voting machines. Although Flavio’s campaign recently faltered After leaked messages linked him to a corrupt banker, the Bolsonaro effect persists: a large part of the Brazilian right has started to speak out against voting machines, especially on social media. Candidates disputed the results of general elections in 2014, 2018 and 2022. If this year’s result is tight, the loser may once again cry foul.
Distrust in the electoral system is driven by polarization and online misinformation, not proven fraud. But its technical nature makes it easy to spread misinformation about the system. When voters enter the polling booth, the machine identifies them by their fingerprints. They then enter the two-digit ID of their chosen candidate, and confirm their choice. To maintain ballot secrecy, votes are not recorded in chronological order, but at random. When the polls close at 5 pm, a tally is printed and hung in the polling station for the public to see, the only paper record of the vote.
A polling official then removes the memory stick attached to each machine, and sends an encrypted electronic record of the tally to the TSE headquarters over a virtual private network. The software that does this was written by the TSE itself, and uses the same security protocols as for bank transactions. Each machine has a unique digital signature that it uses to sign electronic records transmitted to the TSE. If the signature on a batch of votes does not match TSE’s records, it will be blocked from entering the network. The machines intentionally lack the necessary hardware to connect to the Internet or Bluetooth. The memory stick also has a signature, and the machines will reject anything that doesn’t match.
“Even if you have one or a few bad-faith actors in the TSE, there are still a lot of layers of protection for them to not be able to influence the entire system or the vote count,” says Carlos Alberto da Silva, professor of cryptography at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul. “In three decades, there has never been any evidence of electoral fraud in the Brazilian voting system,” says Carmen Lucia, who until recently was president of the TSE. “That fact speaks for itself.”
Brazilians know the results of their elections within four hours after voting ends. Voters can confirm the results by checking whether the numbers of polling stations match the electronic voter logs, which are published on the TSE website. The independent Federal Audit Office also collects a large sample of paper tallies and compares them with electronic tallies. The winner is then certified.
Brazil decided to adopt electronic means to combat widespread electoral fraud. Many illiterate voters used to get their ballot papers filled in advance by the henchmen of politicians. Voter lists often include dead or non-existent people. The matter came to a head during an apparently botched election in Rio de Janeiro in 1994. Hundreds of ballot papers were written in the same handwriting. After that election, TSE convened a group of engineers and legal scholars to come up with a solution. By 2000, voting became completely electronic.
To increase confidence in the system, TSE organizes hackathons at its headquarters before the elections. Any citizen above 18 years of age can participate with expenses. Participants have access to the hardware and software of voting machines, and may attempt to compromise them. If any vulnerabilities are found, the TSE fixes them and invites participants back to repeat their attacks. It also allows the source code of voting machines to be inspected by universities, the military, the federal police, civil-society organizations—such as the Brazilian Bar Association—and political parties.
Marcos Roberto dos Santos, a cybersecurity professor at Atitus, a private educational institution in Rio Grande do Sul, has participated in public security tests four times. “If you have doubts or problems with the system, that’s your right,” he says. “Then go and test it yourself.” Mr Bolsonaro’s efforts to defund the system in 2022 reveal self-interest outweighing security concerns. After his defeat, his party filed a lawsuit to void the results of the run-off – but not the results of the first round, in which it had taken the most seats in Congress.
an omnipotent electoral court
Yet openness and advanced cryptography have their limits. Trust in Brazil’s courts is declining. In most countries, administrative authorities organize elections, while courts hear violations of electoral law separately. TSE staff organize general elections, acquire voting machines, write software, certify results, settle disputes, and fight misinformation. Its membership overlaps with that of the Supreme Court, which many Brazilians view with suspicion. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes oversaw Mr Bolsonaro’s coup trial. During his tenure at the TSE it fined those who defaced voting machines and banned Mr Bolsonaro from holding public office.
“TSEs have a lot of roles that could create conflicts of interest,” says Diego Aranha, a Brazilian cyber-security expert at Aarhus University in Denmark. the country has become so polarized That “any well-intentioned critic of the system aligns with Bolsonerismo, even if the criticism is technical.”
Those well-intentioned critics argue that matching the machines with individual paper receipts, not just polling station numbers, would improve the auditability of the system. This is similar to what India does. The Brazilian Congress has repeatedly called for printouts to supplement electronic records, but the TSE has ruled against it. In 2002 it ran a pilot project that linked printers to machines. But the printers would often jam, requiring human intervention to fix. TSE argued that such a malfunction could delay counting. It also claimed that personal records could compromise ballot confidentiality, as gangs or local bigwigs could ask voters for proof of their vote. “In the Brazilian experience, individual paper receipts have opened the door to voter pressure and control, which undermines the legitimacy of the process,” says Ms. Lucia.
On May 12, Bolsonaro-appointed Supreme Court appointee Cassio Nunes Marques took charge of the TSE. Of the two other Supreme Court judges on the bench, one is also appointed by Bolsonaro and the other has become close to Flavio in recent years. While Mr Moraes was accused of exaggeration, Mr Nunes Marx said the TSE would intervene as little as possible this time. This may provide relief to Bolsonarista for the time being.
