
How Brazil’s Leader Built the Myth of Rigged Elections
By Jack Nicas, Flavia Milhorance and Ana Ionova
Produced by Gray Beltran
Leer en español
For years, President Jair Bolsonaro has been attacked by Brazil’s election systems.
One of his claims has been that apparent patterns in vote results show proof of fraud.
This is really strong evidence
that something happened,
that something was changed
in the transmission or inside.
Livestream on Jair Bolsonaro’s Facebook page, July 2021
He has repeatedly said that election officials count votes in secret, suggesting they could manipulate results.
The votes that are sent to Brasilia,
they go to a secret room!
My God. The count should be public,
but it goes to a secret room.
Livestream on Jair Bolsonaro’s YouTube page, April 2022
And he has said that he suspects hackers tried to steal the presidential election from him in 2018, but failed.
The deal with these hackers would be to
divert 12 million votes from candidate Jair Bolsonaro.
To disappear with 12 million votes.
I repeat, I don’t have proof,
and I don’t know if it is true.
But that’s the story we’re investigating.
Livestream on Jair Bolsonaro’s YouTube page, August 2021
Those claims are false, according to Brazil’s election officials, fact-checking agencies and independent election-security experts who have studied the country’s electronic voting system.
Yet in speeches, interviews and hundreds of posts on social media, the president has consistently and methodically repeated those baseless claims and many others about Brazil’s voting system.
The result has been a yearslong campaign that has undermined