Kassio Nunes Marques, president of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), said Monday that extending voting hours did not change President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s runoff victory, countering Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro’s claim.
The TSE said Lula won Sunday’s runoff with 64,256,232 votes, or 51.79% of valid ballots. Bolsonaro received 59,826,041 votes, or 48.21%.
Bolsonaro said he would not recognize the result and would ask his lawyers to seek an annulment over the voting extension. MercoPress reported Monday that there was no record of a formal challenge at that point. Nunes Marques’s statement addressed the extension’s effect on the result; it was not a ruling on an annulment case.
Supreme Federal Court Justice Cristiano Zanin ordered two additional hours of voting at polling stations that were still open. Lula’s coalition had sought more time, citing a shortage of buses to carry voters in some cities. Bolsonaro’s campaign made a separate request to the electoral court, citing heavy rain.
Nunes Marques said thousands of voting machines had already been shut down when the order arrived and could not be reopened. The TSE paused its receipt of vote records while it adapted its tallying procedures, creating a backlog. The court described the last-minute extension as unprecedented in its experience.
Former President Jair Bolsonaro, the senator’s father, appointed Nunes Marques to the Supreme Federal Court in 2020.
