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.
A couple of things to understand about Brazilian elections:
- Voting is mandatory for all citizens aged 18-70, though failing to vote nets you a 4 BRL fine (less than a dollar)[1]
- Every Brazilian citizen has an ID with photo (I’ve only recently learned that USA doesn’t have something like a nationwide ID);
- Election happens on a sunday and people who have to work on said day can ask to leave for 2 hours in order to vote;
- Voting is standardized and organized at a federal level, even for municipal voting. The electoral tribunals exist solely for dealing with elections;
- The majority of funds spent on campaigns come from the electoral fund, which is distributed to parties according to how many elected deputies, senators and governors they have (a great way to ensure big parties stay rich and well funded). Up until 2014, corporations could still donate to campaigns. After that, only citizens may donate and only up to 10% of their earnings.
- The electronic urns are audited before and after elections[2], they are completely offline and save votes to an internal disk. Since their inception, despite many claims, no fault or fraud has ever been found on the hardware or software. Even fucking bozo and his flunkies couldn’t find any security breach back in 2022, while he was in power.
- With how urns are distributed, it’s easy to account if the total amount of registered votes is equal to the amount of voters that showed up. This first verification is done once voting time is over by the 4 poll workers that care for each urn/section.
- Voters have to do both ID and biometric verification (fingerprint) before voting
- No cell phones or kids go in the booth with you (take a wild guess why “no kids”)
I understand people who would rather have it be non mandatory, but think about a criminal group ensuring only “their people” go out to vote. With optional voting, it gets easier for them to ensure victory. This would be a real situation in many cities in Brazil, where said criminal groups already do everything in their power to ensure “their guys” get elected. ↩︎
This isn’t a “we self audited ourselves” situation, in case you’re wondering. Universities, Federal Police, Army and several other entities, public and private, can take part in the audit ↩︎
81 year old? Can’t a generation just fucking die already?
Should have seen him at the debate. He was running circles around Bolsonaro, at thirty years his junior.
Being a fascist is bad enough, being an incompetent fascist is more than bad enough.
Now being an incompetent fascist that get’s humiliated against someone as old as trump is downright sad.I agree but still better than a Trump aligned person winning. Anyone in that pool is like voting for the end times. Basically authoritarian types, anything must be better than them, even an old dude.Ill add that I know almost nothing except who Trump wanted to win and they’re bitching about results, the Trump way, oh also think the loser vamoosed recently, to the well known sanctuary of the United States. Oh good job we know how much they enjoy immigrants…he has money? Oh pardon my faux pas.
sounds like another 81 yo that was a sore loser in 2020.
Electronic voting is such a liability for exactly this reason, it gives bad actors plausible doubt to throw on an election result.
Pen/pencil and paper. Much more secure.
There was a saying in Brazil, up to the 90s, that “elections are won in the counting” - fraud was rampant, especially at municipal/state level and the electronic urns got rid of that.
Paper can only be considered more secure if you have special paper and special printing like money bills, otherwise they can be falsified much more easily.
this was literally the narrative to try and make them less secure by the bolsonaros when they were in power. the brazilian voting machine is actually state of the art and they know it.
the machines can also be rigged, and often for the fascists.
Lost me on that. Pen and paper aren’t at all more secure than Brazilian voting machines.
They are essentially low spec linux computers without ports, internet acess or easy way in. The only thing they do it store results and print them on paper.
Even if one manages to crack open a machine and sneak something inside, there is security to prevent it to pass as genuineThe internal state of the machine is not observable and not auditable. Anything stored in a computer can be falsified and the voter cannot know that it recorded their vote correctly. Unless the printing you are referring to is that it prints a paper ballot for each voter that they can check and then drop in a ballot box, then there is a step in the process that scrutineers can’t have eyes on. Even if the software is open source and the scrutineers got to watch it being compiled and installed on the machines, there are so many unobservables. Computers are literally billions of times more complicated and harder to audit than pencil and paper.
The only electronic voting system I would even begin to entertain trusting is one that basically just fills the ballot out for you to make sure it is legible, and that you can validate the paper ballot. Such a system could then also keep its own count, giving a much quicker unofficial count before the paper ballots are counted, but I don’t really think it’s worth it. It is still an extremely complex machine that it would be easy to hide some sort of surveillance/wireless connection in, and anyone who can inspect the running total counts can also use that to determine how each person that goes through the booth voted.
There is value in the brutal simplicity of pencil and paper, folding your ballot, and putting it in a box. It’s a system anyone can understand and that the human eye can audit.
There is value in the brutal simplicity of pencil and paper, folding your ballot, and putting it in a box. It’s a system anyone can understand and that the human eye can audit.
Which can also be easily falsified
Electronic voting is such a liability for exactly this reason
Gotta go back to the old tried and true Butterfly Ballot system. That never fails.
Pen/pencil and paper. Much more secure.
Nothing in the election machinery prevents a candidate from claiming fraud.
Certainly, nothing about pen and paper ballots prevents disreputable agents from stuffing ballot boxes or just refusing to count opposition votes entirely.
You Americans better fucking vote like the Brazilians. Congrats Lula and carry on exporting and filling the massive holes the MAGA fucknuts opened for you.
Unfortunately the majority of deputies and senators are from Bolsonaro’s party. Lula’s win was a huge victory, but we still have a lot to fight for here in Brazil.
The good thing is that Lula’s party learned how to comunicate through social media, this helped him TREMENDOUSLY in his victory.
more like the people took it to their own hands, came and showed it to him on a silver platter. lula’s campaign was slow and cold until that.
things look up if that willingness to fight for the country continues. after both a historic election and the end of the 6x1, i figure there’s great potential hiding there.
Good things democrats are running ads throwing trans people into the meat grinder for no reason. When they don’t even have to talk about trans people when they should be talking about the fact that Donald Trump has raped children and has ducked the ENTIRE economy. But Dems are going to do there best to try and shit brain themselves out of a sure fire victory.
Edit: Also congratulations to Brazil from an embattled American.
My big worry is that since Dick Cheney passed away, who are the the Dems going to parade around on the campaign trail with and receive glowing endorsements from? Henry Kissinger and Adolf Hitler are also dead. Maybe they can get one of Trump’s kids to endorse them but that seems like a bit of a stretch.
The DNC are essentially the controlled party outside of 2 people aoc and bernie, none in the DNC are willing to vote for something else, they want to still be apart of the grift of what the GOP has, Donor money.
What ads? All I’ve seen are R attack ads spouting nonsense and transgender people.
You Americans better fucking vote like the Brazilians.
Brazilian voting is mandatory.
And their mandatory voting system has routinely produced far right governments.
It isn’t really mandatory in practice. If you don’t vote you have to either justify it or pay a fine.
The fine is less than 3 dollars currently. Not a lot for an American, not a lot for a Brazilian. It does vary, but doesn’t go into the double digits.
Being outside your designed voting place is a valid justification, being sick is a valid justification - the system really isn’t so strict.
Would say it’s symbolically mandatory
Bolsonaro quickly refused to concede defeat and asked for the election results to be annulled
What a little bitch.
4.4 million votes. No recount is going to fix that.
Right? That’s a lot of votes, there’s no doubt he lost.
Probably all illegal immigrants. Does Brazil even have 4 million citizens?
/s
I guess that’s why he’s trying to have it annulled?
I have no idea what the situation is like on the ground, but since we’re talking about South America and the U.S. has Trump as president: A recount, no… but maybe a military coup.
Brazil is much more capable to resist a US attack than Venezuela was
Let’s hope you’re right about that. I’m not so much worried about the U.S. itself as I am about the possibility that Bolsonaro Jr. might attempt a coup, just like his father… if about 50% of voters supported the autocrats, even a small amount of U.S. interference would be enough.
IIUC, Caracas is 50% farther from Brasilia than it is from Miami.
Bolsonaro jr. is about to end his term as senator. He doesn’t have anything close to his father to attempt a coup. All he can do is cry. He’s just turned in his passport by court order because he’s under investigation on suspicion of committing several crimes.
Heaven forbid!
Yes, he was, thankfully, removed.
Also what a fuckin surprise /s
Why are these little fascists always sore loosers?
When you’re against democracy, it would be weird to respect the democratic process. Fascists will always try to circumvent the rules as long as they’re not in their favour, simply because fascists don’t respect anyone but themselves.
“If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism; they will abandon democracy.”
I would extend this liberals who are simply NIMBY about fascism. They think Azov Brigade are “heroes”.
“Democracy” to the West is just a cudgel to steal natural resources, a selective privilege enjoyed on the backs of the oppressed.
exactly, this is what right leaning liberals fail to understand.
their countries most likely officially considers countries like argentina as “democratic” while condeming every single thing that isn’t unbridled capitalism. this is precisely what western politicians openly about latin america, and that’s what bolsonaro was. a cudgel to steal it for themselves.
the us and a bunch of the west should try being democratic before thinking they can be taken seriously about democracy.
Freedom of speech, press, media and free elections are all constantly threatened under autocratic, dictatorial and conservative governments. We’ve seen enough striking examples in recent times. Trump, Orban, Bolsonaro, Vučić, Putin, Milei, Maduro etc. Those certainly are working on or tried to abolish said institutions even by trying insurrections (Bolsonaro, Trump). Yes, you’re correct by stating that a democracy is not automatically just but I’d always choose the candidate/party that upholds democratic values. Better for the environment and lower and middle class people. Not regarding the bad politics Biden gov had in some regards, they were unquestionably and immeasurably better for the common people, poor people around the world (see USAID), the world economy and the environment than those of the orange menace.
And yes the Ukraine had/has a Nazi problem, but so does about every other democracy. Why should we shun all people of a country because of a minority of idiots?
minority
Idk about “minority.” It’s a pretty big problem.
All opposition parties have been banned. All opposition media has been seized by the government. They can’t vote. Men can’t even leave to escape this fascist death cult. You’re fucking deluded.
The entire problem is that small hateful minority has control of the government, and has never let go since their 2014 coup.
We thought this was over when Zelensky campaigned and won on peace through the Minsk Agreement, but he had no control from day one. Zelensky is now a kapo stooge who will never outlive his usefulness to these “minority of idiots”.
Oh yeah, and U.S.A.I.D. also kidnapped homeless people to torture to death for practice with fascist dictators. The “aid” isn’t all sacks of food.
This is funny (circle around the patch on the soldiers vest). You know, when you’re in the killing people business you want a cool logo, something that says, I’ll fucking kill you. And next thing you know… some imbecile revokes your medal, or somebody says, “see, see, look, he’s a Nazi Sympathizer!” sigh
-edit- I just got trolled by Russian propaganda farm didn’t I?
No, this guy seems like a genuine marxist leninist.
All opposition parties have been banned.
All?
I don’t like it either, but Ukraine is being invaded.
Stalin was probably even more dictatorial when his former ally, Hitler, invaded the USSR.
“Great Patriotic War”: 1941-1945
WWII: 1939-1945
They can’t vote.
Could they vote in Britain during WWII?
Men can’t even leave to escape this fascist death cult. You’re fucking deluded.
Those over 60 can, as well as boys 17 and under.
Btw, doesn’t Russia and Brazil have conscription?
and has never let go since their 2014 coup.
Wasn’t Yanukovych kicked out by the Ukrainian parliament after repressing people?
We thought this was over when Zelensky campaigned and won on peace through the Minsk Agreement, but he had no control from day one.
I think the Budapest Memorandum is more important than the Minsk Agreement.
Zelensky is now a kapo stooge who will never outlive his usefulness to these “minority of idiots”.
Meanwhile supposed anti-fascist Putin is bombing Ukraine and trafficking in Ukrainian children—teach them to hate Ukraine and maybe kill Ukrainians.
Lmao republican
Close, tankie
a bit closer, leftist
Cause they cheat and still lose and assume the other person must have cheated more.
because they intentionally want to throw a wrench in whatever won’t suit their interests.
Because their path to power always involves exploiting good will and benefit of the doubt.
They’re all cry bullies, they act tough as long as there’s no resistance, but if they don’t win they’ll say anything they think of to change a result or make an excuse.
The only reason they have any followers is people think they’re strong. So they can never admit they lost, there’s always has to be some bullshit to blame it on.
If they admit they’re not the majority. There goes most of their followers, because their followers just want strength and to identify as a winner.
Because they do all manner of funny business and fear being caught and ending up in jail when they’re out of power or they can’t hide behind a defense of “interference in elections” to avoid the Justice System investigating and prosecuting them.
I mean, just look at how Netanyahu is holding to power in Israel on the backs of over a hundred thousand dead Palestinians just to avoid the Corruption case against him.
Or Flavio’s own dad, Jair, who is already arrested.
Oddly enough, some are more so than others. Take Orban for example. While not shy of all sorts of shady means to bend the election to his will, when all of that did not suffice anymore, he simply conceded defeat. Also the Serbian autocrat Vucic appears to accept defeat. Maybe he is afraid of facing the fate of other autocrats in case he is trying to overthrow anything.
It takes special liberal gymnastics to leap over 80% of the dictatorships America is directly arming to land on these half-baked examples.
I have no idea what you are talking about, above poster was posting about fascists always being sore losers. Those are just two relevant examples from Europe that occurred very recently. They are not representative but they do prove a point that fascists are sometimes much less entrenched in power than they want to make everyone believed to be. Also Vucic was hardly “America’s” man, he played the US and Russia both at the same time.
I’m saying that liberals use democracy and fascism selectively. We have direct control over governments we’re directly arming, who are much worse examples, but their kneejerk war boner goes directly toward nations that haven’t already handed over all their natural resources.
Everything is about chipping away Russian aligned governments, ever toward the real goal.
What does the image have to do with your reply?
Coveting the world’s resources is the driving force in American foreign policy. In addition, all pipelines lead to Europe.
Arctic thaw is opening up vast troves of previously untouched natural resources. The Northwest Passage is about to be a reality. This is why Trump wants Canada and Greenland.
The Rand Corporation wrote a whitepaper that basically translates to “how to fuck up Russia and take all their shit”
Giving missiles to Nazis is just a start.
Coveting the world’s resources is the driving force in American foreign policy.
I won’t argue with you on that; but that’s probably true, at least to an extent, with many countries.
In addition, all pipelines lead to Europe.
Yeah I’m sure there are some pipelines going to Europe, but they’re probably also other pipelines going to other places too.
Arctic thaw is opening up vast troves of previously untouched natural resources.
I’d say it’s making ship transport easier. One still has to drill and dig for mineral resources.
The Northwest Passage is about to be a reality.
more a year round.
This is why Trump wants Canada and Greenland.
With him I think it’s more ego. Resources that Americans want they’re already buying from Canada, though tariffs are getting in the way. Greenland hasn’t refused military bases, indeed, IIUC, the US had a diminished presence in Greenland until Trump came along.
It’s kind of like Putin: there was probably more intelligent, easier, more diplomatic, less costly, and more peaceful ways for Russia to deal with what it considered problems to it, in or from Ukraine, but Putin, like Trump, is an irredentist: IIUC, he essentially told Tucker Carlson that there is no Ukrainian nation, that it’s actually Russia.
The Rand Corporation wrote a whitepaper that basically translates to “how to fuck up Russia and take all their shit”
IIUC Zbigniew Brzezinski thought that by luring the former USSR to invade Afghanistan, he could bleed them, and in less than 14 years after the USSR invaded Afghanistan, it broke up—and to this day Afghanistan remains a basket case.
Some historians wonder what would happen if Hitler stopped with Sudetenland, he might have lived well past 56 years of age, like Franco did.
Putin wasn’t looking too bad until 2008, and even then many cut him some slack until 2014.
Thanks to him, Russia is suffering, Ukraine is suffering more, Ukrainian nationalism is greater, NATO has gotten bigger, the US military-industrial-complex is probably richer, and Putin is even more entrenched. Next year, he will have outlived Stalin.
Giving missiles to Nazis is just a start.
So you’re saying those who resist Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine are Nazis?
“Liberals”, “the West” or"much worse examples" are all failing the point I was making before. I was mentioning that in Europe two authoritarians with fascist tendencies conceded to lost elections, after having failed to secure a majority even with underhanded attempts of influencing the outcome. Are you saying that this was not the case or that was not what they were?
But then, the real problem for you appears to be none of that but rather that those autocrats were aligned with Russia, right? Even though that is in the case of Vucic a bit of an overstatement, he played both sides really.
Good luck continuing to breathe
The same reasons school yard bullies are quick to cry when someone punches them back
You just described Flavio’s dad.
Everytime the investigations aganinst him advanced, he would run to the hospital claiming to need some emergency operation to fix his intestines.
After he got sent to jail, he started acting like a moribund senile grandpa, falling from the bed, complaining about the air conditioner’s noise, while newspapers would every fucking day report his family crying about how much he was suffering.
If it’s loose and sore seek medical help!
Wrong question. We already know the answer to that question. The key here is how Brasil fights back to squash Trumpism from their democracy. We may learn something.
Trump is not going to invite him to the next cannibal orgy.
Fear
Why is it always the right wingers that are the worst losers?
Right wing philosophy boils down to “obey me or else”.
The origin of the words left and right in a political context comes from the French Revolution. Specifically from the events of the Estates General, and the writing of the failed constitution of 1789.
The first vote, “Should the Monarch have an absolute veto over laws passed?” was determined by seating. Those in favor (the nobility and clergy from the richer areas) sat to the right of the speaker’s podium, those opposed (people who wanted democracy, which included the some of the country nobles, country clergy, and the near entirety of the third estate) sat to the left.
This pattern repeated on most questions, those who supported monarchy sat to the right, democracy to the left. The newspapers, which were recently completely freed of censorship, started using left and right as shorthand for the two sides.
The philosophers then stepped in. Tomas Paine and Edmund Burke for two English language examples. Paine actually traveled to France and served in the legislature, despite not speaking French. Edmund Burke stayed in England and wrote about how the masses needed to be controlled by their betters, who should be selected not by birth, but by wealth. Burke was not a noble, but he was rich.
Edmund Burke is the father of Conservatism. He was somewhat explicit that the thing he wanted to conserve, was power over others. Later writers have obfuscated things a bit, but if you look, the message is the same.
So, when a right-winger loses, it’s someone who really wants unchecked control over others being told to fuck off.
Left and right thinking derive from religious context dating back even before Judaism. Left represents living with free will as professed in esoteric ideologies while right represents ideologies professing living under ethical codes. Even within the occult ideologies there is left-hand path and right-hand path. Although, in that context left-hand path represents the worst of all evil.
Yeah, a lot of the ancient occult wisdom was made up in the last couple of centuries. Con artists saturate that space, or rather, they created that space.
But Left and Right in a political context is directly traceable to the French Revolution and the events of 1789, and is well documented because of the removal of censorship on newspapers that I had mentioned.
Left and right handed in context of spirituality dates to tantric origins. Vāmācāra and Dakṣiṇācāra are Sanskrit defining those very terms. I happen to know this based on my years of studies. While it was later reused by occultists in the late 1800s it appears the same is true during the late 1700s as well.
If they possessed the ability to be mature they wouldn’t be right wingers in the first place.
It’s the other way around. Right wing politics and especially fascism are simply an extension of whining and stomping feet. Once you notice the links between the two they are impossible to unsee.
Right wing philosophy is at it’s core a lie. Any validity in the process threatens their ability to accumulate and consolidate power. So they must seek to make the process seem invalid at every turn.
I like to imagine the reaction of different people being told “no.” Like someone who is trying to rob you versus someone who is trying to help you. It’s fury versus disappointment.
Here’s a playbook of the Rights response to this.
- Say he cheated. Over and over and over and over again.
- Be completely unwilling to accept actual evidence that proves there was no cheating.
- Act outraged and suggest or imply that physical violence is an acceptable response.
- Never ever, ever admit you were and are wrong.
Forgot the part about public lynching
I’d prefer it if someone other than Lula could keep the fascists out of power. Still, it bought Brazil a few more years.
that’s why the momentum has to be kept from the end of the 6x1 and now the election. plenty potential to be prepared for what’s to come.
« This is unacceptable, we the far right cheated but not enough… We should cancel the election results so I could win with my us oligarchs friends and pardon my corrupt father. “ said bolsonaro.
And save myself
Crazy how you can win by standing for something instead of twerking for fascists. Can’t relate due to being American.
Brazil and Serbia. Good on them. America, you’re up. I would include Israel but even the best possible government there fucking sucks balls.
if only we got some of this in Hong Kong…
How does a far-right nut job get that many votes? Lula isn’t a saint by any stretch of the imagination from what I understand, but damn, man, when the choice is crazy dictatory 2.0, the choice is easy.
Even your impression of “He isn’t a saint”, assuming you don’t mean it in the most generic sense that would apply to literally anybody, shows the power of rightwing propaganda.
I haven’t gotten any information about Lula from right wing propaganda. I get it from my friend who lives in Brazil and tells me what he is doing in the country. I don’t live in Brazil, so why would I read about Brazilian politics? Lol
My point isn’t that you got anything directly from Brazilian news. It actually adds to my point that that’s not the case. I’m talking about the power rightwing propaganda has to leave most people with an impression, even when they don’t directly engage much.
a lot of people get informed almost exclusively through neofascist zucc apps or televangelical comprador tv in brazil. shouldn’t be that surprising.
It’s because the far-right nut jobs friends control the digital media landscape.
Also apolitical people being controlled by big tech
Well, how did a known child-rapist and convicted felon get (re)elected? Also was an easy choice, but I guess a black woman was too far, they’d rather have the child fucker.
Things I think helped Trump in 2016, and to an extent 2020:
- Be a celebrity on television.
- Be a billionaire, run in one of the parties, attack all the others running in the primaries, and imply that if you don’t get the nomination, you’ll run as an independent. I think Trump would rather Clinton have won than any other Republican running for President. The GOP didn’t want another 1992, so they gave into him.
- Pick the low-hanging fruit. Attack Muslims when Islamic State were committing atrocities, SJWs, and corrupt Democrats (of which there were/are plenty). Exploit weaknesses.
- America Uber Alles. Americans don’t need the world.
- Luck is a factor.
Its almost like putting a former DA as the candidate for left leaning electorate was a bad choice.
I think the cover-up of Biden’s decline was more of a factor.
Had he resigned in very early 2024 (maybe become a President-emeritus-of-sorts), she acts as President for a few months and shows her stuff, and have real primaries (which she probably would have won if she was half-competent as acting President), she wouldn’t have gotten 1.5% of the popular vote less than Trump, but probably more.
Also maybe go on Joe Rogan, and maybe be more aggressive in the debate. “Donald Trump, you are such a liar! Please stop lying! You can’t stop lying! Stop lying!” Maybe not even bother debating him.
Agree. Ultimately she was a bad choice and a bad candidate who benefited because tRump is such a piece of shit. The Democtartic elite have no respect for the constituents.
Nah the Blue MAGA people would rather infantalize her and point to her race and gender as her reason for losing. Bill Maher would be so proud.
He talked about Lady Barack Obama and “Gus rules”.
IDK how did Trump get elected? Oh I know propaganda and a solid chunk of humans being dumber than my stupidest cat, who I should note almost died as a baby due to not even recognizing wet food as food and to this day only eats dry food because that’s what I trained him to eat I have shoved chicken in his mouth and he spat it out.
That’s literally all he will eat, not complaining though since it keeps him from being an ass while I’m eating.
Good
🇧🇷 🇧🇷 🇧🇷
brasil campeão porra
🇧🇷
