Videos that suggest fraud in the Brazilian election are misleading because voters did not find the ballot box from their polling stations on the website of the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE). As the Court explained, the sections are not listed because they were added to others. This means that the votes have been counted, but to verify them, you must display the data in the main section.

studied content🇧🇷 four videos circulating on social media show voters trying to access voting data from their respective polling stations on the TSE website. However, the number of any of the sections does not appear on the platform. The cases are two voters who voted abroad (in Toronto, Canada, and Miami, USA) and two who voted in Brazil (in Colíder, Mato Grosso, and Passos, Minas Gerais). In the videos, citizens claim that the votes were not counted and therefore there was fraud in the election.

where it was published: TikTok and Instagram.

Conclusion of Comprova: It is misleading that votes at polling stations abroad and in Brazil were not counted, indicating suspected fraud at the ballot box in this year’s elections.

According to the TSE, the sections of people who appear in the videos posted on social media were, in fact, aggregated with others and, therefore, do not appear in the way they were searched. Still according to the Court, the aggregation occurred in more than a thousand polling stations set up abroad.

The TSE also informed that the aggregation of polling stations is a method used by the Electoral Tribunal to optimize polling stations that have few voters, mainly abroad, in order to reduce operating costs.

misleading, for Comprova, is any content removed from the original context and used in another so that its meaning undergoes change; which uses inaccurate data or which induces a different interpretation of the author’s intention; confusing content, with or without the deliberate intent to harm.

scope of publications: Comprova investigates suspicious content with greater social media reach. As of November 10, the post had 29,800 views, 3,904 likes and 177 comments.

What the person responsible for the publication says: Via TikTok, Comprova attempted to contact ‘Alex Bolsonaro’, head of the profile that posted the video of the alleged fraud at the polling station in Toronto, Canada. However, the social network only allows the exchange of messages between accounts that follow each other.

Comprova has also made contact, through a direct message on Instagram, with Ana Roberta, who published the video indicating alleged fraud in the votes of an electoral section of the municipality of Colíder, Mato Grosso, and until the last update update of this publication, he had no response.

The Comprova team could not contact the authors of the videos reporting alleged fraud in electronic voting machines in Miami (USA) and in the city of Passos (MG).

How do we check: We start the verification by looking in the Google information from complaints from voters that their votes had not been counted at polling stations in Brazil and abroad. We found news in some communication vehicles, like the Estadão Checksa Reuters and the control agency to the facts🇧🇷 There are complaints in the city of Colíder, in Mato Grosso and in Passos, Minas Gerais. Brazilians living in the United States and Canada also doubted the vote count.

We searched for the Regional Electoral Court of Minas Gerais (TRE-MG), Mato Grosso (TRE-MT) and the Federal District (TRE-DF), competent to vote abroad. We also questioned the TSE.

Section aggregation

According IS, polling stations and votes cast in electronic ballot boxes have not disappeared. What happened, in fact, is that the sections in which these people voted were aggregated with others. In this election, the situation occurred in 24,163 polling stations in Brazil and in more than a thousand polling stations abroad.

According to clarifications from the technical area of ​​​​the TSE, both the website and the application Results only display information about the main sections. Therefore, the claim that the votes of registrants and other voters who voted in the same ballot box were not counted is misleading.

The organization also explained that the aggregation of sections by electoral zones is a common and planned practice in election standardto reduce operating costs by grouping together polling stations with few voters.

The Regional Electoral Courts (TRE) can determine the grouping of the sections aimed at the rationalization of the electoral work, provided that this does not cause prejudice to the exercise of the vote.

Information about aggregated sections and other situations (such as distributed sections of the letter) can be looked up in the election statistics and not TSE Open Data Portalin the spreadsheet of voters by polling station.

The votes in Brazil have been counted

Two of the videos investigated were recorded by Brazilians, residents of Passos, Minas Gerais and Colíder, in Mato Grosso, who claim their votes were not counted. However, sections 0292, from Passos, and 0036, from Colíder, have been added to others.

Contacted, TRE-MG informed that the section had the votes registered with those of section 0316. clarifying note published on November 7, the agency informed that section 0292 was working in CEMEI Coimbras and that the aggregation was already in force in the first round of the election.

🇧🇷 Image of printed ballot box, highlighting information on aggregated sections. Image: TRE-MG.

According to TRE-MG, 33 other polling stations in Passos were consolidated during these elections. In total, Section 0316 registered 175 eligible voters, of whom 138 showed up. There were 99 votes for Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (PT) and 34 for Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

🇧🇷 Image from TSE website with ballot box data in section 0316, Passos.

In Colíder, Mato Grosso, the electoral section of the author of the video, 0036, was incorporated into 0034. According to the TRE-MTOrdinance number 015/2022 published in the Official Journal on August 4 formalized the aggregation of 19 sections in the State.

In total, Section 0034 registered 328 eligible voters, of whom 238 showed up. There were 55 votes for Lula and 181 for Bolsonaro.

🇧🇷 Image from TSE website with ballot box data in section 0034, in Colíder.

The votes abroad have been counted

As for videos recorded by residents in Canada and the United States, Section 1212 in Toronto and Section 3345 in Miami have been added to others, as stated by the TSE.

In the case of Toronto, the section the author of the video would vote for, 1212, was merged into 1031. IS Datain the second round of elections, the Canadian city registered 9,704 votes, 9,299 valid, 239 invalid and 166 blank.

Of the total, Lula got 5,188 votes (55.79%), while Bolsonaro got 4,111 (44.21%).

In Canada, according to G1 report, Lula won with 61.61% of the vote (13,181 votes) and Bolsonaro with 38.39% (8,213 votes). The country has the fourth largest electorate in Brazil outside the national territory, with 38,988 voters. Of this number, 22,473 (57.64%) took part in the second ballot, which took place in 53 polling stations in four Canadian cities.

In total, Section 1031 registered 780 eligible voters, of whom 403 showed up. There were 181 votes for Lula and 206 for Bolsonaro.

🇧🇷 Image taken from the TSE website with data from the Toronto Section 1031 ballot box.

In the case of Miami, section 3345, present on the video author’s voter card, was added to section 1346, which operated at Valencia College West Campus, in Orlando. According to the TRE of the Federal Districtthe 396 voters out of 3345 voted with the 399 voters out of 1346.

“The number of votes in the section can be verified by the respective ballot box printed at the end of the vote, as well as by the attendance registers in the appropriate voting registers signed by the voters voting,” informed the TRE, in a Remark.

In total, Section 1346 registered 792 eligible voters, of whom 538 showed up. There were 80 votes for Lula and 452 for Bolsonaro.

🇧🇷 Image from TSE website with ballot box data from Section 1346, Miami.

According IS Data, in the second round of elections, Miami registered 16,732 votes, of which 16,245 were valid, 259 null and 228 white. Of the total, Lula had 3,058 votes (18.82%) while Bolsonaro had 13,187 (81.18%).

In the United States, according to G1 report, Bolsonaro won with 65.48% of the vote (44,654 votes) and Lula with 34.52% (23,542 votes). The country has the largest electorate in Brazil outside the national territory, with 182,653 voters. Of these, 70,429 (38.56%) participated in the second ballot, which took place in 260 polling stations in ten North American cities.

Election data abroad

In the 2022 elections, more than 697,000 Brazilian voters living abroad were eligible to vote, representing 0.45% of the total electorate. In the first round, the TSE recorded 304,032 votes. On the occasion, former President Lula found himself at the head of the challenge, with 47.39% of the valid votes, which represents 138,933 of the total votes. President Jair Bolsonaro collected 122,500 votes, which corresponds to 41.6%.

In the second round, there was an increase in the number of Brazilian immigrants voting, reaching 310,148. Lula came out on top in the final count, with 152,905 votes (51.28%), against 145,264 (48.72% ) for Bolsonaro.

All immigrant voting is organized in the so-called “Electoral Zone ZZ”. Over the past four years, the number of voters living outside Brazil has increased from 500,727 in 2018 to 697,078 currently, representing an increase of 39.21%.

According to the TSE, the ballot abroad had 2,197 polling stations, distributed in 181 foreign cities. Polling stations abroad are open when the regional consular office registers at least 30 voters.

why do we investigate: Comprova investigates suspicious content going viral on social media regarding the pandemic, federal government public policy, and presidential elections. Right now, content that contains misinformation about the current president or president-elect can disrupt democracy.

Other checks on the subject: At least three media have performed the same check. O Estadão Checks and the Reuters released the case of the Miami voter. The control agency to the facts investigated the questioning of a voter in Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro, who said her vote had not been counted.

In further checks on the voting system and elections, Comprova showed that American journalist failed to prove Biden’s influence in Brazilian electionsWhat the message that credits Arthur Lira leading pilgrims to Juazeiro to drive abstention in the 2nd round is false is it it is a false request for arrest in flagrante delicto against STF Minister Alexandre de Moraes after the elections🇧🇷

This content has been studied by Plural, Tribuna do Norte, imirante.com and CNN Brasil. The survey has been verified by Estadão, Estado de Minas, A Gazeta, CBN Cuiabá and Metropoles. The check was posted on the Comprova project website in November 10, 2022.