Former Brazilian congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro again cast doubt on the integrity of Brazil's electoral system on Thursday, days after his brother, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, repeated false information about electronic voting machines in a meeting with foreign ambassadors in Brasilia, according to single-source reporting by Folha de S.Paulo.
Eduardo, a son of former president Jair Bolsonaro and a member of the right-wing Liberal Party, appeared in a livestream with Argentine political consultant Fernando Cerimedo. Cerimedo worked on President Javier Milei's campaign in Argentina and, after Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defeated Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil's 2022 presidential runoff, promoted claims that the Brazilian election had been fraudulent. Specialists who reviewed the data rejected those accusations, Folha reported.
Cerimedo was indicted by Brazil's Federal Police in an investigation into an alleged coup plot after the 2022 election, but he was not included in the formal complaint filed by the Prosecutor General's Office.
Eduardo Bolsonaro framed the livestream as a discussion of a topic he said had been deliberately criminalized in Brazil. Over roughly an hour, he and Cerimedo revived suspicions about electronic voting that Brazilian electoral authorities and outside observers have repeatedly dismissed. They also referred to recent fraud claims made by U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of the U.S. midterm elections. Trump has never accepted his 2020 defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.
During the broadcast, Eduardo read from a slide presentation whose opening slide said that questioning privately supplied electronic voting systems had moved from "conspiracy theory" to a documented national security vulnerability, citing the CIA. He also claimed that a final report by a Brazilian Army commission that examined the voting machines had not cleared them of vulnerability. He said it was impossible to audit Brazil's electronic voting machines and linked public anger over that issue to the January 8, 2023 attacks in Brasilia, when supporters of Jair Bolsonaro stormed government buildings after Lula took office.
Brazil has used electronic voting for decades, and the system is overseen by the Superior Electoral Court, the country's national election authority. The 2022 election was observed by international organizations including the Organization of American States and the Carter Center, both of which attested to the regularity of the vote.
Eduardo Bolsonaro was sentenced last month by Brazil's Supreme Federal Court to four years and two months in prison for coercion during legal proceedings. He has obtained permanent residence authorization in the United States, where he has placed himself in self-exile, Folha reported.
The new remarks followed comments by Flavio Bolsonaro on Tuesday in which he claimed that Brazil's electronic voting machines had the same origin as machines made by the Venezuelan company Smartmatic. Folha described that claim as false. Flavio also said that, according to a CIA report released the previous week, Smartmatic had been involved in a Venezuelan government plan to commit fraud in the country's 2012 election.
The New York Times, cited by Folha, reported that the CIA analysis found no evidence that Venezuela's electronic voting technology had been used for large-scale electronic fraud and concluded that the Venezuelan government lacked the ability to manipulate elections in other countries. According to the Times, the analysis said neither Smartmatic nor the Venezuelan government had the capacity to alter an election result outside Venezuela.
At the same event, Flavio Bolsonaro urged foreign countries to send as many observers as possible to Brazil's elections, including people with knowledge of voting technology. Brazil already receives election observation missions from foreign technical institutions recognized for independence and professionalism, Folha noted.