Brazil Heads for a Peaceful Transition, but With Lessons for the U.S. | Opinion

"I know you're upset. I'm just as sad and upset as you are. But we have to keep our heads straight," announced Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on November 3. That day, he called for protestors objecting to his apparent defeat in his country's October 31 runoff presidential runoff vote to stand down, remove road blockages, and keep any further protests peaceful. Contrary to widespread media speculation and accusations from his political opponents, Bolsonaro appears reconciled to leaving office as of January 1, 2023, and will not contest the election. Last Tuesday, he initiated the transfer of power to Brazil's former leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who served as president from 2003 to 2010 and will return to the presidency for a third four-year term.

Brazil's 2022 presidential election has been highly politicized, to put it mildly. Both sides argued that democracy would be threatened if the opposing candidate won. A violent outcome was widely predicted.

Bolsonaro, a conservative populist frequently compared to former U.S. President Donald Trump, is despised by the political and media establishment in his country and around the world. Amazon deforestation, though less than it was during Lula's tenure, has made him a prominent target of the global climate change movement.

Lula, as he is commonly known, was sentenced to a long prison term on corruption charges in 2017. His successor and ally Dilma Rousseff, who served as Lula's chief of staff (a high-ranking cabinet post roughly equivalent to prime minister), was impeached and removed from office.

After less than two years in jail, Lula was controversially released by Brazil's inordinately powerful Supreme Federal Court, which has broad investigative and police powers, can annul criminal sentences, and has been accused of exceeding its mandate to impose unlawful politically motivated sanctions and de facto administrative punishments. It also has the power to investigate, prosecute, judge, and punish individuals who criticize it or its decisions, usually on defamation grounds. Eight of the court's 11 justices were appointed by Lula or Rousseff, inviting allegations of political favoritism.

Many Brazilians believe that Lula, who was never exonerated of the crimes of which he was convicted, will usher in a new era of high-level corruption and crime. He is also alleged to have close ties to China, which is seeking inroads in Latin America, often in partnership with the leftist governments and political leaders now dominating the region. The leftist majority on the Federal Supreme Court is further alleged to have undertaken punitive investigations of Bolsonaro supporters in cases that it adjudicated and issued judgments, without appeal. In September 2021, its officials even detained and questioned some American conservatives, including former Trump adviser (and recent Newsweek contributor) Jason Miller, who had traveled to Brazil to attend a national incarnation of the well-known Conservative Political Action Conference. The purported grounds for the arrest was engagement in "anti-democratic activity."

Bolsonaro has steadily warned about the risk of election fraud—not only in this election cycle, but since 2015, shortly after an earlier center-right presidential candidate narrowly lost the presidency. At issue is Brazil's entirely computerized voting system, which has no paper backup to allow for any form of recount or audit. Like any computer system, it is vulnerable to attack and possible fraud. In 2018, in fact, hackers infiltrated it deeply enough that the offenders were sent to prison. Its software is also similar to the system used in Venezuela, which is widely believed to have been fraudulent across elections since 2004, and was admitted by its manufacturer, Smartmatic, to have added about one million extra votes to a 2017 Constituent Assembly election that favored President Nicolas Maduro's socialist regime. The Brazilian software is also claimed by some to be similar to some software systems deployed in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the integrity of which is still doubted by tens of millions of Americans.

According to a recent poll, some 75% of Bolsonaro's supporters say they have little or no confidence in their national voting system. Bolsonaro's political party, which increased its parliamentary presence in the election to become the single largest party, and which also captured several important governorships despite the president's defeat, has repeatedly tried to switch to a more reliable paper ballot system. Those efforts have been stubbornly resisted by Brazil's political establishment.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lula's victory was immediately proclaimed and declared sacrosanct. He received the standard platitudes from world leaders hoping to work productively with his administration. Plaudits from President Joe Biden, and nearly identical remarks from former President Bill Clinton, however, made a deliberate point of describing his election as "free, fair, and credible." Earlier this year, it was widely reported that CIA Director William Burns had told Bolsonaro in a June 2021 dinner meeting that he must not cast doubt on election integrity in his country. Critics of Brazil's election integrity have been dismissed as "election deniers" and worse, and invidiously compared to Trump supporters who still question the 2020 election results. Most mainstream media outlets have added the same "false" qualification to Brazilian fraud claims that they added to fraud claims in America. YouTube took the extraordinary step of censoring content advancing such claims—an important restriction, since much of the Brazilian protest movement communicates via the platform's signature video sharing.

Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets after the October 31 runoff, alleging election fraud and urging the country's military to intervene to keep Bolsonaro in office. Taking a cue from their colleagues in Canada, Brazilian truckers set up about 150 blockades, paralyzing commerce and communications across the country. Before Bolsonaro called on them to stand down, some commentators feared Brazil faced tumult potentially up to outright civil war.

With a Republican sweep all but assured in tomorrow's U.S. midterm elections, Brazil presents a powerful example of what can go wrong as a desperate and defeated Democratic Party supported by our seemingly intractable administrative-managerial caste approaches 2024. Come January, the new Congress should move assiduously to reform federal judicial and law enforcement bodies that have exceeded their authority to carry out political hit jobs on Republicans and their supporters. And Congress should work hard to make sure that election integrity is of the highest possible standard. Crucially, this includes the total abandonment of machine-based vote counts, which have now sown serious doubts of freedom, fairness, and credibility in three separate countries.

Paul du Quenoy is president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.