Brazil agency rejects push by Bolsonaro to void votes

The head of Brazil’s electoral authority has rejected the request from President Jair Bolsonaro’s political party to annul ballots cast on most electronic voting machines, which would have overturned the Oct. 30 election.

Alexandre de Moraes had issued a prior ruling that implicitly raised the possibility that Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party could suffer from such a challenge. He conditioned analysis of the request on the presentation of an amended report to include results from the first electoral round, on Oct. 2, in which the party won more seats in both congressional houses than any other, and he established a 24-hour deadline.

Earlier Wednesday, party president Valdemar Costa and lawyer Marcelo de Bessa held a news conference and said there would be no amended report.

“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,” de Moraes wrote in his decision hours later.