The mere fact that an individual convicted and imprisoned for corruption was elected President of Brazil would say a lot about the justice and electoral systems of that country. The story of how a criminal and ex-convict could retain his political rights to run in a presidential election, with a little help from Brazil's judicial system, is beyond the scope of this article.
But what I do think it is pertinent to emphasize here is that once the ex-convict is on the ballot, what finally happens should depend only on what the will of popular sovereignty expresses, without interference of any kind, since if the people truly wish to be led by a criminal, despite the obvious flaws of their judicial system, clearly no one should object to it.
However, if this electoral system lacks a post-mortem audit that allows a clear and physical verification of the electorate's preference, especially when the final result has a difference of less than 2%, then this election will surely be in question, no matter how many electronic mechanisms "of international prestige and extreme reliability" they have (see in Spanish Electronic voting in Brazil: 4 keys to the electoral mechanism that Jair Bolsonaro questions, in https://www.perfil.com/noticias/internacional/voto-electronico-en-brasil.phtml).
Indeed, "...the Brazilian state promoted the reform of the voting system. With the help of the army, computer experts developed the first model of electronic ballot box used in 57 cities in the 1996 municipal elections. The trial was successful: 67% of voters used these machines in the 1998 presidential elections, and in the following elections paper voting was completely eliminated. Brazil, meanwhile, became one of 23 countries in the world to use electronic ballot boxes in general elections, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), while 18 others use them in regional elections".
And that was the electronic voting trap into which countries as important as Brazil in Latin America have fallen (see in Spanish The Electronic Voting Trap: From Manual to Automated Scrutinies, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2013/11/la-trampa-del-voto-electronico-de.html), and which has been increasingly used by groups interested in changing the electoral results to get or stay in power, by substituting the manual scrutiny by an automated scrutiny, without the possibility of physical verification, eliminating the printed receipt where the voter verifies through his own senses if his decision was perfectly registered in the system. If the machine or the automated system as a whole modifies it, the receipt could -and should- be verified later in an audit.
This is confirmed by the ruling of the German Constitutional Court of March 3, 2009, which prohibits the use of election computers: "108... The democratic legitimacy of the election requires the ability to control the electoral process in order to exclude or correct manipulations and to refute unjustified suspicions. Only this makes possible the confidence based on the due order of the conformation of the organ of representation. The obligation of the legislature and the executive to ensure that the electoral process conforms to the Constitution and is carried out properly is not enough, by itself, to convey the necessary legitimacy. Only if the electoral people can convince themselves of the legality of the act of transfer, i.e., that the election is conducted "in the eyes of the public", will it be possible to achieve the necessary legitimacy (cfr. Schreiber, Handbuch des Wahlrechts zum Deutschen Bundestag, 7. Ed. 2002, § 31 Rn. 2) the sovereign's confidence in the parliament's occupation in accordance with the will of the electorate, which is necessary for the functioning of democracy and the democratic legitimacy of state decisions, can be guaranteed.” (emphasis added) (see in Spanish German Constitutional Court, Judgment 2 BVC 3/07 - 2 BVC 4/07 - Unconstitutionality of the E-Vote, in https://tinyurl.com/2st6t7mc).
For a strange reason, which could only exist in the minds of the politicians who have decided on the increasingly intensive use of these "electronic ballot box" systems, the fundamental decision to give the results of the decision of a people in elections has been placed in the hands of computer systems. And any computer system can be changed at the will of those who operate and control them, without leaving any trace. The "electronic ballot box" system is indeed an instrument for voting, but also to be used literally for the burial of democracy. And as we will see below, Jair Bolsonaro was quite right to distrust these systems.
If there is any country that has suffered from these automated systems, it has been Venezuela since 2004, year in which the regime changed the LOPE (Organic Law of Electoral Processes) and the CNE regulations to adjust it to the so-called "electronic voting". Despite the fact that the electoral machine in Venezuela still issues receipts, the valid vote is the one indicated by the machine, not the one that comes from any subsequent audit made to a polling station. But I will not tell here the story of that suffering that I have already detailed over the years in this blog.
I will only dwell on the indicators that point to a massive fraud in the last presidential elections in Brazil, specifically in the first round, like the one we always denounce in Venezuela, due to the existence of the same technology that prevents the voter from having auditable control of his electoral preference.
In a very recent report dated October 29, 2022, titled. “2022 First Round Brazilian Presidential Elections - Vulnerability Analysis Report” (See full report in English, in https://tinyurl.com/mwax3azj), published on the networks, forensic experts applied the Newcomb-Benford Law to the set of numbers made public by the Brazilian Electoral Tribunal (TSE), "showing inconsistencies in the vote tabulation in several regions of the country" (see Forensic Experts Suggest Mathematical “Red Flags” In First Round of Brazilian Presidential Election, Cites Benford’s Law, in https://creativedestructionmedia.com/analysis/2022/10/30/breaking-forensic-experts-suggest-mathematical-red-flags-in-first-round-of-brazilian-presidential-election-cites-benfords-law/), and specifically in 2,637 Electoral Zones, as revealed in the Report.
For those unfamiliar with this technical subject, the Newcomb-Benford Law is a mathematical methodology that has been used to detect anomalies in large data sets, being a very reliable indicator that points out the possible manipulation of data to favor a numerical result, and consequently a thorough audit of the whole process is necessary. It was used to detect the fraudulent manipulation of Enron's financial reports of income and profits in the USA, being successfully applied in the Venezuelan case to detect the fraud in the results of Hugo Chavez's 2004 recall referendum (I especially recommend you to watch in Spanish The Power of Mathematics, in https://youtu.be/IZNiFCvlbP8).
The mere application of this mathematical law and the results obtained in Brazil's elections, give rise to the immediate initiation of a fraud investigation for both rounds of the presidential election, as well as a thorough review of its automated electoral system. It is important to note that the publication was withheld "for distribution after the close of voting in the second round so as not to interfere with the electoral decision making of Brazilian citizen voters" as stated in the Report.
Venezuelans should remember that this methodology was also applied to the presidential election of October 8, 2012 in Venezuela, resulting in an anomaly similar to the one described in Brazil in this recent election (see in Spanish, Nature betrayed the CNE, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2012/12/la-naturaleza-delato-al-cne.html). Hence, we continue to affirm that as long as computer systems such as those in Venezuela and Brazil continue to be used, elections will never be authentic, giving way to political instability, giving way to the permanence or enthronement of authoritarian regimes and violators of Human Rights.
The publication of this report highlights that "people in Brazil are unable to report on these matters for fear of prosecution"... "As both Fox News (see Fox News, in https://twitter.com/foxnews/status/1586442776350162945) like the New York Times, there is a clear indication that the supreme and electoral courts are biased and will crack down on anyone who investigates the integrity of Brazil's elections or journalists who provide information that could be construed as questioning the integrity of the electoral systems or the court's own enforcement actions". Any resemblance to our reality is already beginning to be a mere coincidence in Brazil. The red-red plague is already in full international operation and making itself felt in our great neighbor, by the work and grace of the electronic voting...
Caracas, November 1st, 2022
Blog: https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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