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apnews.com

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a vocal critic Donald Trump, was reelected Sunday in a result that provides relief to critics of widening U.S. influence in Latin America.

With 100% of the vote counted, Brazil’s electoral court announced that the soon to be 81-year-old Lula had a lead of nearly 4.4 million votes over opponent Flávio Bolsonaro, giving him 51.8% of the total vote. Bolsonaro quickly refused to concede defeat and asked for the election results to be annulled after an evening of chaos at some polling places that followed a last-minute decision to extend voting by two hours.

Bolsonaro is the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, whom Lula defeated to take the presidency in 2022.

Lula’s triumph bucks a regional trend of victories for right-of-center presidential candidates allied with Trump. It also means Latin America’s largest economy, with a GDP of $2.6 trillion per year, will likely continue defying Trump’s demands, despite the pressure of increased tariffs.

  • MisterFrog@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    7 hours ago

    Hand marked paper ballots are notoriously prone to failure. Nothing about them is materially more secure than a printed ballot. And yet…

    There is something inherantly more secure about physical ballots. They exist in the physical world and need to be physically counted, and can’t be just erased by the flip of a bit.

    I can fully wipe a harddrive fairly trivially, I can’t fully erase a pencil mark without some serious chemicals, an iron and probably a bunch else.

    It isn’t easily solved, as the number of venues and volume of votes leave ample opportunities for shenanigans (or, at least, alleged shenanigans).

    The Ohio Recount in 2004 is a classic example.

    First of all, the USA in general has terrible voting practices. Second you’re right, no system can ever fully defend against people making shit up and getting voters to distrust an election, however:

    An average person can fully comprehend how a paper voting system is kept secure. An average person cannot do the same for electronic voting because inherantly it gets into software and hardware security.

    I really encourage you to watch those videos I sent, Tom Scott lays out the arguments very well.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      There is something inherantly more secure about physical ballots.

      There isn’t. They can be easily misread and miscounted, they can be misfiled, hidden, lost, and destroyed. They are a bitch to transport securely. They can vary in format and interpretation. They’re comically easy to spoil.

      An average person can fully comprehend how a paper voting system is kept secure.

      No they can’t.

      Again, jump back to Bush v Gore. Or go all the way back to Nixon v Kennedy or Tammeny Hall New York. Hell, consider the elections in Iraq and Vietnam and Korea after the various US occupations, and the comically one-sided election results. Or elections in the old Soviet Bloc, which Americans routinely dismissed as fraudulent. Or the most recent elections in Latin America that remain openly disputed.

      Very easy to point to historical moments where the paper ballot systems were distrusted. That’s pretty much the whole history of their use.

      • MisterFrog@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 hour ago

        Bush v Gore

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore

        You mean the classic example of once again fucking around with something not just pencil and paper, in a country with a history of laughably bad voting systems?

        Very easy to point to historical moments where the paper ballot systems were distrusted. That’s pretty much the whole history of their use.

        You are also just lumping in bad election procedure and declaring electronic voting better.

        I’m not saying paper elections are secure just by the virtue that they’re on paper, and you framing it that way is pretty dishonest. I’m saying that the most secure electronic election can never be as secure as the most secure paper election.

        You’ve just ignored all I’ve said about invilators from all parties, adequate supervision of all ballots at all times. Do errors happen? Sure, but in far, far smaller fraction that what you could achieve by compromising election machines.

        The fact that machines are un-networked is a laughable defence. Ever heard of Stuxnet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

        This is ABSOLUTELY within the capabilities of state actors. Like not just theoretically. It’s already happened in multiple cases.

        I’m sorry, but everyone could learn a thing or two from the Australian system. We certainly don’t have a fair democracy because we live under capitalism, and the wealthy will always use their influence to get their way, but at least our election procedures are probably one of the best, if not the best in the world.

        If you want to just pretend like electronic voting is secure, then have fun I guess. But you’re literally just sticking your fingers in your ears.