Lula declared re-elected as Flávio Bolsonaro vows to challenge result

Brazil’s electoral court has declared President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva re-elected after Sunday’s run-off, but his defeated opponent, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, says he cannot recognise the result and will seek to have the election annulled. His objection centres on a late extension of voting hours.

The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) announced 64,256,232 votes for Lula, or 51.79% of valid votes, against Bolsonaro’s 59,826,041, or 48.21% — a lead of 4,430,191 votes.

“It is impossible to recognise the election result in the context of how these things happened,” Bolsonaro said, in translation, in a speech published by Brazilian outlet Poder360. He said his legal team would ask for the election to be annulled. That was an announcement of his intention to challenge the result, not confirmation that a case had been filed.

Bolsonaro argues that a last-minute decision by Supreme Court justice Cristiano Zanin treated voters unequally. It allowed voting to continue until 7pm, but only where it had not already ended at 5pm. The TSE says thousands of voting machines had been closed by then and could not be reopened. Its president, Kassio Nunes Marques, said the decision also disrupted the count and left a backlog of results to process.

Both campaigns had requested extra voting time earlier that day, though for different places and reasons. Lula’s campaign cited problems with public transport; Bolsonaro’s cited rain, flooding and power cuts.

Nunes Marques said the extension did not affect the result, according to the Associated Press. The 4.43 million-vote margin alone cannot establish its effect on individual voters. Law professor João Pedro Padua told AP that annulling the election would require showing that the extension affected voters’ ability to express their will freely. Whether Bolsonaro’s planned challenge can make that case remains unresolved.