巴西最高法院法官下令延长投票两小时引发选举争议

Kassio Nunes Marques Lula Marques/Agência Brasil Brazil’s presidential runoff on Sunday (Oct. 25) marked an unprecedented moment in the country’s electoral history: for the first time since electronic voting machines were introduced, a court order extended voting hours beyond the scheduled closing time. The decision came from Supreme Federal Court (STF) Justice Cristiano Zanin, who granted a request from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party (PT) campaign, citing disruptions to voter transportation in several states. Zanin intervened after Superior Electoral Court (TSE) President Kassio Nunes Marques failed to rule on whether polling hours should be extended. In a subsequent statement to reporters, Nunes Marques stressed that the Supreme Court’s decision had not affected the election outcome. Lula’s campaign was not alone in seeking an extension on Sunday (25). His defeated rival, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (Liberal Party, PL), also petitioned the TSE to keep polling stations open until 7 p.m. in municipalities across several states because of heavy rainfall in parts of the country. Lula wins historic comeback, bucking global rightward shift Brazil’s next government faces crowded energy agenda After the results were announced, however, Flávio denounced the Supreme Court’s decision as “bullshit” and said he would seek to annul the election. Speaking after the vote count was completed, Nunes Marques insisted that extending polling hours by two hours, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., had not changed the result. “We have absolute confidence in the entire electoral process,” he said. Zanin ordered the extension at 5:03 p.m., after polls were scheduled to close. The TSE president explained that Zanin’s order, issued around 5 p.m. as voting was due to end, had been successfully implemented. By that point, however, thousands of electronic voting machines had already been shut down, and their programming prevented them from being restarted. As a result, Nunes Marques said, the transmission of vote tally reports from individual machines had to be temporarily blocked to ensure equal treatment of the results. Transmission resumed after 7 p.m. “We had to block the transmission of voting machine tally reports, but even under all these circumstances, we took every necessary measure and were entirely successful. I repeat: there was no change resulting from the court decision [to extend voting hours],” he said. Delays and criticism Supreme Court justices interviewed by Valor said the ruling came late and caused confusion because STF Chief Edson Fachin took too long to assign the case. Lula’s campaign filed its petition at 3:46 p.m., but Zanin was not appointed rapporteur until 4:33 p.m. The justices also said Nunes Marques had been alerted by Lula’s campaign early in the afternoon to reductions in bus services in several municipalities in Bahia but was slow to respond. It was not until around 4 p.m. that he requested information on bus operations from Bahia’s regional electoral court and the state branch of the Electoral Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPE). Some Supreme Court justices who spoke to Valor believe Nunes Marques deliberately avoided making a decision, leaving him responsible for the turmoil surrounding the runoff. In his remarks to reporters, the TSE president said he had refrained from ruling because he had only “a few hours” to reach a sufficiently informed conclusion. “It would not have been possible, in just a few hours, to establish with certainty that no side effects, particularly technological ones, arising from a court decision could significantly affect the vote count,” Nunes Marques said. Shortly after Zanin issued his ruling, Senator Rogério Marinho (PL), Flávio’s campaign coordinator, criticized the extension. “The degree of interference by some STF justices is astonishing. I sincerely hope common sense prevails and that no judicial coup or administrative trickery succeeds, for the sake of democracy,” Marinho wrote on social media. Bus shortages in Bahia In Bahia, the regional electoral court went so far as to order the arrest of Salvador’s municipal mobility secretary, Pablo Souza, after investigations found that the city’s bus fleet had been reduced by approximately 42% on election day. Electoral authorities also ordered the full fleet back into service. Souza was in Paris on an official assignment and therefore was not arrested. In a statement, Salvador City Hall said he would return to Brazil on Monday (Oct. 26) and provide an explanation. The municipal government attributed the delays in bus operations to a morning campaign activity in which stickers bearing Lula’s ballot number, 13, were allegedly placed on buses. Throughout the afternoon, Lula complained about the lack of public transportation, accusing “unscrupulous business owners” and “dishonest mayors” of trying to prevent people from voting, not only in Bahia but also in São Paulo and other states. The president said mayors in municipalities where voters had reportedly been prevented from reaching polling stations should be held accountable. He compared the situation to roadblocks carried out by the Federal Highway Police during the 2022 runoff, which hindered voters’ journeys to polling stations, particularly in northeastern Brazil. “It is inexplicable that, in the 21st century, you have mayors trying to obstruct and prevent people from exercising their democratic right to vote freely.” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Complaints in other states In São Paulo, Lula’s campaign also filed a complaint with the regional electoral court against the city government, alleging that only 60% of the bus fleet normally scheduled for weekdays was operating, despite a court order requiring full service. São Paulo's Mayor Ricardo Nunes (Brazilian Democratic Movement, MDB) disputed the accusation, saying the number of buses in circulation was “far greater” than demand. The Federal Police said it had opened an investigation into the failure to provide free public transportation in Sergipe and was examining four other cases in São Paulo, Alagoas, Piauí and Bahia. The agency said those involved in the complaints would be interviewed later that Sunday. “We have already opened an investigation to determine the circumstances under which this happened, particularly whether there were attempts to prevent or obstruct people from exercising their right to vote, as well as to conceal information about the provision of transportation,” Dennis Cali, the Federal Police’s director of Investigation and Combating Organized Crime and Corruption, told reporters at the National Integrated Command and Control Center (CICCN) in Brasília.