According to a bulletin from the Superior Electoral Court, 1,420 electronic voting machines had to be replaced nationwide. The number represents 0.27% of the total number of ballot boxes used.
According to a report released by the Department of Justice and Public Security at around 12:30 p.m. (local time), of this total, 76 cases were “exit cases”, 115 cases of vote buying, 9 attempts to violate votes, 16 cases of illegal transport and 65 crimes committed in polling stations.
The same document shows that nine weapons have been seized, 184 people have been arrested and 1.9 million reais (€360,000) in cash allegedly used to buy votes.
One of the latest cases of vote buying occurred in the north of the country, in Amapá state, where a person was arrested near a polling station with a large amount of money.
Amid this tense scenario resulting from the polarization between supporters of the current president and re-election candidate Jair Bolsonaro, and supporters of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT), the chairman of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Alexandre de Moraes, after voting in São Paulo, told reporters that the day passed “calm and safe”.
Unlike previous elections, in Brasília, all polling stations opened at 8 a.m., in a sort of subordination of all polling stations to the Brazilian capital’s time zone.
The more than 156 million voters can vote in Brasília until 5 p.m. (9 p.m. in Lisbon), in the 577,125 electronic voting machines spread over 5,570 cities in the country.
In addition to Lula da Silva and Bolsonaro, the candidates Ciro Gomes, Simone Tebet, Luís Felipe D’Ávila, Soraya Tronicke, Eymael, Father Kelmon, Leonardo Pericles, Sofia Manzano and Vera Lúcia are competing for the Brazilian presidential election.
If none of the presidential candidates gets more than 50% of the valid votes, the two most voted candidates will face each other again on October 30 in a runoff election.
The right to vote will also determine the governors of the country’s 27 states, renew the 513 members of the Chamber of Deputies, 27 senators and hundreds of MPs who will sit in the country’s regional assemblies.
Source: DN
