Brazil electoral court fines Bolsonaro alliesmillions after the election challenge. The attempt by the party of outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro to have the results of the run-off election he lost in October overturned by the head of Brazil's electoral court.
The parties in Bolsonaro's alliance were also penalized by justice Alexandre de Moraes of the supreme court 22.9 million reais ($4.3 million) for engaging in what the court deemed to be 'bad faith' litigation.
Bolsonaro disputed the results of the Brazilian presidential election, which he lost to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva last month. He said that some votes from some machines should be thrown out.
His group said that after auditing the second-round runoff between Bolsonaro and Lula on October 30, they found "evidence of catastrophic malfunction" in several electronic voting machines.
Brazil electoral court fines Bolsonaro allies millions after the election challenge. De Moraes had previously ruled that Bolsonaro's party may suffer if it raised the issue and had asked for more information, which the party declined to offer.
According to De Moraes' final ruling:
The complete bad faith of the plaintiff’s bizarre and illicit request … was proven, both by the refusal to add to the initial petition and the total absence of any evidence of irregularities and the existence of a totally fraudulent narrative of the facts.
In a 33-page appeal filed on Tuesday (Nov 22), lawyers for a party said that all votes recorded by the machines should be thrown out because most of Brazil's voting machines have a software flaw that prevents them from keeping unique identification numbers in their internal records.
The impact of the bug on the outcome of the election was not addressed by Costa or de Bessa. Even though the information was new, experts said that it was still reliable and that each voting machine could still be found using other methods.
He also asked for an investigation into Valdemar Costa, who is the head of Bolsonaro's party. In a letter, he said that it seemed like the challenge to the result was meant to cause trouble and encourage protests that aren't democratic.
On Wednesday, Costa claimed that his main goal was to stop Brazil's future problems from being caused by the outcome of the 2022 election.
The supreme electoral court, as well as Brazil's top lawmakers and foreign supporters, have recognized Lula's victory. In the days following the run-off election in October, Bolsonaro has given his government permission to start preparing for a presidential transition.
The head of Lula's Workers party, Gleisi Hoffmann, earlier called Bolsonaro's election complaint "chicanery."
After challenging his loss to the leftist candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the recent presidential election, Brazil electoral court fines Bolsonaro allies millions after the election challenge on Wednesday (Nov 23).