Brazil

Brazil Elections: Voting System

Is Brazil's electronic voting a gold standard of democratic integrity or a paperless system ripe for justified skepticism?

AUG 6·Updated 7 days ago

Context

Above: Electoral court staff tests an electronic voting machine in Manaus, Brazil on July 8, 2026. Image credit: Michael Dantas/AFP/Getty Images

The Facts

2026 General Elections: More than 158 million Brazilians, at home and abroad, are registered to elect federal and state officials in general elections scheduled for Oct. 4, with a potential runoff for executive offices on Oct. 25. Voting is mandatory for more than 136 million literate citizens ages 18 to 69 and optional for about 22 million people who are either 16 or 17, over 70, or illiterate. Yet voter turnout is far from universal: in 2022, it was below 80%. Citizens who fail to vote at their assigned polling station in either round must justify their absence or pay a nominal fine.
The Dialogue
Tribunal Superior Eleitoral
Tribunal Superior Eleitoral
Electronic Voting: Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) introduced electronic voting in the 1996 municipal elections to combat the country's chronic electoral fraud after widespread irregularities in the 1994 elections in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Nationwide implementation was completed in 2000, fulfilling a provision in Brazil's 1932 Electoral Code that first envisioned the use of voting machines. As part of this system, voters cast their ballots on standalone, direct-recording electronic voting machines by entering candidates' unique identification numbers.
DW
The Economist
O Globo
The Dialogue
The Rio Times
Tribunal Superior Eleitoral
Tribunal Superior Eleitoral
Voting System Security: According to Brazil's top electoral court, which oversees the entire electoral process, the voting system employs layered security protocols similar to those of bank transactions, such as unique digital signatures and cryptographic hashing to authenticate software and ensure the integrity of election data, while lacking internet or Bluetooth connectivity. Other procedures in place to secure the vote include hackathons known as Public Safety Tests to find vulnerabilities, source code inspections and random integrity tests on the eve of the election.
BBC News
The Economist
Jovem Pan
Poder360
Tribunal Superior Eleitoral
Distrust in Voting System: Concerns over electronic voting machines in Brazil began gaining traction after Dilma Rousseff won reelection against Aécio Neves in a tight presidential runoff vote in 2014. At the time, Neves' Brazilian Social Democracy Party commissioned an audit that found no evidence of fraud but said that the voting system doesn't allow for an effective audit, prompting calls for a paper audit trail. TSE maintains that the equipment is auditable, pointing to post-election ballot box bulletin, ballot box log and the Digital Vote Record.
BBC News
CNN Brasil
Estadão
NBC
The Wall Street Journal
Tribunal Superior Eleitoral
Fraud Allegations: Ahead of the presidential election in 2022, Jair Bolsonaro said that there were "indications" of electoral fraud denying him an outright win four years earlier as well as that the voting system was "completely vulnerable." After his defeat, he said his party had found "signs of irreparable... malfunctions," while an Armed Forces report didn't point to or rule out the possibility of fraud in electoral machines. A 2026 poll found that 43% of the respondents say electronic voting machines cannot be trusted, up from 35% in 2024 and 22% in 2022.
The Economist
FOX News
Ministério da Defesa
Reuters
The Associated Press
Valor International
Printed Ballot Proposals: The Congress has repeatedly sought to add a paper audit trail to electronic voting machines ever since their nationwide adoption. First, a law approved in 2002 was revoked one year later after a costly and troublesome pilot program in 2002. Two other laws passed, one in 2009 and one in 2015, but the Supreme Court ruled that printing ballots could undermine the secrecy of the vote, thus declaring it unconstitutional. While a constitutional amendment proposal put forward in 2019 failed to pass, the draft of a new Electoral Code that institutes paper audit trails is currently pending a Senate vote.
Senado Federal
Senado Federal
Supremo Tribunal Federal
Supremo Tribunal Federal
Tribunal Superior Eleitoral

Sources Split

LEFT

CENTER

RIGHT

ESTAB
CRIT

CENTER

PRO
ESTAB

The Spin

Narrative A

Brazil's electronic voting has run cleanly for decades: hacker-tested, audited by parties and the military, and verified on-screen before confirmation. No court has ever upheld a fraud claim. Printing ballots adds no security and only creates vulnerabilities. It invites bad-faith discrepancy claims and risks ballot secrecy, opening the door to coercion and vote-buying schemes, at a multimillion-dollar price tag to appease baseless conspiracies. Defending the electronic ballot box is defending Brazilian democracy itself against the same election deniers that stormed key government buildings in 2023.

Folha de S. Paulo

RFI

Narrative B

Brazil's electoral process relies entirely on vulnerable paperless direct-recording electronic voting machines, even after the Congress passed two laws to adopt printed ballots — the global gold standard in voting technology and the only system that leaves proof behind when something goes wrong — by crushing majorities over the past two decades. Yet, the Brazilian establishment resists, spreading straw man fallacies in bad-faith and twisting a call for a paper trail into an attack on voting secrecy and democracy itself. It's not hard to understand why people in Brazil are growing skeptical over electronic voting machines.