In an attempt to change the votes of the Brazilian elections, former President Jair Bolsonaro challenged the results of the presidential elections, which he lost last month to Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, arguing that the votes cast by some machines must be “nullified”. However, this initiative will find it very difficult to move forward.
“It was discovered in their report that there were ballot boxes that were broken and that they were stopped at the same voting period and turned on again,” explained Engineer Carlos Rocha, an audit officer of the Liberal Party (PL) report.
These accusations were met with skepticism, because Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court had already confirmed the victory of Lula da Silva, whose new election was recognized by politicians and international leaders, after he was already president between 2003 and 2011. But this court gave Bolsonaro’s party 24 hours to submit the full report About electronic voting machines, general elections and the second round of the presidential elections.
Despite the fact that he is unlikely to be able to effectively reverse the outcome of the election, Bolsonaro has already been accused of fanning this fight in order to fuel protests in Brazil led by supporters of the outgoing president, at a time when roadblocks and other obstacles are mounting: Protest actions, especially in states such as Mato Grosso, Santa Catarina and Rondonia, which took advantage of the national holiday of the founding of the Republic in Brazil, where thousands of demonstrators gathered in front of barracks in several Brazilian states.
According to UOL NotÃcias columnist Leonardo Sakamoto, this strategy is known as the “Texas Sharpshooter fallacy”.
“This appears when we appeal to the collective illusion, using the human tendency to see patterns where there are none,” he argues. “Which, by the way, takes advantage of another human tendency: that people believe that everything contrary to what they previously believed is true.”
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