Elections in Brazil are still a topic, at least on social media. Brazilians went to the polls on October 2 (the day of the first round) and then on October 30 to elect the President, but also the deputies to Congress, the Senate and dozens of governors.

Now, on Instagram, several users are sharing the theory that in these elections two types of ballot boxes were used, some produced before 2020 and others after. The urns have supposed differences, in addition to the date of their production: “The new ones can be audited, the old ones can’t.“, affirms the publication under review, and the oldest urns would have been sent to the interior of northeastern Brazil and appeared with “zero votes for Bolsonaro”, something that “does not happen in the new”.

The post also explains that the “ballot box has at least 2 software with a different algorithm that limits the number of votes to 22 and releases to 13, that is, the source code has already made the change in the ballot box itself.” Here it is important to remember that each candidate for President of the country had a number. Lula was 13, Bolsonaro 22.

Therefore, the conclusion is only one: “The fraud was systemicnot only at the polls, not only in the count, but in the ENTIRE PROCESS from the beginning. Lula was just a piece of that system.”

So let’s get to the facts. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) issued a statement guaranteeing the auditing of electronic ballot boxes in Brazil since 2002. By the way, the ballot boxes used by Brazilian voters to elect Lula da Silva were the same ones used by Brazilian voters to elect Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. Over the years, there has been no shortage of audits:

In this period, these ballot box models have already been subjected to various analyzes and audits, such as the PSDB Special Audit in 2015 and five editions of the Public Safety Test (2012, 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2021)”, says the TSE .

And how does the audit of electronic voting machines work?

According to the Brazilian press, the country’s voting systems go through two tests, one for integrity and the other for authenticity. According to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the Integrity Test simulates a normal vote, on election day, and represents “a kind of listening, the purpose of which is to verify that the votes entered in the electronic ballot box, based on previous votes marked on paper ballots, they are the same ones that the teams counted.”

The Authenticity Test was carried out before the first and second rounds of the 2022 elections. The TSE ensures a “public procedure” that takes place “in real time, before the start of voting.” The Authenticity Test aims to verify that each electronic voting machine has the official Electoral Justice systems installed.

These are tests carried out 20 years ago, and in 2022 a biometric test was also carried out to verify the fingerprints of voters.

Globo writes that the Federal Court of Accounts analyzed three thousand ballots and found no discrepancies.

conclusion

It is false that the ballot boxes in Brazil were not audited and it is equally false that two types of ballot boxes were produced and that only equipment produced after 2020 gave votes to Jair Bolsonaro. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal of Brazil performs two types of tests to audit electronic voting machines, and both are performed on election day. A practice that Brazil has maintained for 20 years, without exception for these elections.

Thus, according to the Observer classification system, this content is:

WRONG

In the Facebook rating system this content is:

FAKE: Main content claims are factually inaccurate. This option generally corresponds to “fake” or “mostly false” ratings on fact-checking sites.

NOTE: This content was curated by The Observer as part of a fact-checking partnership with Facebook.