Five things on Brazil's voting machines
By AFP
Published August 31, 2022
Louis GENOT
Brazil has used electronic voting machines in its elections since 1996. But it is only recently they became controversial, with allegations by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro that they are plagued by fraud.
Here are five things to know about the squat beige computers fueling a raging debate on democracy in Latin America’s biggest country.
– How did they start? –
Ironically, given Bolsonaro’s bashing, the electronic voting machines were introduced partly to combat fraud. Brazilians used to vote on paper ballots where they would check a box or write in a name, depending on the type of election.
In a country where 14 percent of the adult population was illiterate, the system was chaotic, slow and fraud-prone.
“There were always problems with the count. Illegible writing, names written in the wrong place, X’s outside the box — all that meant a ballot was declared null,” says Henrique Neves da Silva, a former judge on Brazil’s Superior Electoral Tribunal. There was also a lot of fraud and ballot-box stuffing.”
Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/business/five-things-on-brazils-voting-machines/article#ixzz7dcCU219M
= new reply since forum marked as read
