With Brazil’s presidential election just a month away, President Jair Bolsonaro is feeding concerns about the nation’s electronic voting system.
He has long insisted that the machines, used for a quarter-century, are prone to fraud, though he acknowledged last year that has not been proved.
Brazil’s top electoral authority says the system has been tested rigorously and some critics of Bolsonaro say he may be laying the groundwork for an attempt to cling to power if the vote doesn’t go his way – much like former US President Donald Trump, whom Bolsonaro has said he admires.
Here’s a look at Brazil’s electronic vote system:
Brazilian authorities adopted electronic voting machines to tackle long-standing fraud. In earlier elections, ballot boxes had arrived at voting stations already stuffed with votes. Others were stolen and individual votes were routinely falsified, according to Brazil’s electoral authority.
Electronic machines were first used in 1996 and the first nationwide, electronic-only vote took place four years later. Today, results from more than 150 million eligible voters are presented mere hours after polls close. And no significant fraud has ever been detected.
More than two dozen countries use some form of an electronic system for national elections, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. But 80 percent do not, and voters in most...
The author and behavioural scientist, Gad Saad, has just published a book on what he calls “suicidal empathy”. He says that “a society dies when it cares more about exhibiting infinite tolerance a...