Brazil electoral court unveils vote counting room

Justice Alexandre de Moraes, head of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, today (Sep 28) introduced the so-called vote tally room, where court authorities will monitor the counting of ballots at the 2022 elections.

The place—equipped with glass partitions and located in the Election Announcement Center (CDE), on the third floor of the court building—will open at 4:30 pm next Sunday (Oct 2), so that supervising entities may keep track of the tally.

“It’s an open room, a bright room. It’s neither a secret room nor a dark room,” said Justice Moraes, in reference to the rumor that votes would be counted in a hidden chamber.

The space has several computers with which court officials should monitor the vote tallying process through a series of programs designed by the electoral justice department to tally printed ballots. “These people don’t count votes. They monitor the IT environment so that the systems—already sealed—can run smoothly,” said the court’s IT Secretary Julio Valente.

The chief judge of the court stressed that the counting is conducted by systems developed and sealed by electoral authorities, adding that their codes were previously inspected by the entities overseen the Elections 2022. “The monitoring aims precisely at preventing any network issue or overload,” he went on to say.

Several representatives from political parties and from some of the dozens of supervising entities—such as the Brazilian Bar Association, the Prosecution Service, the Federal Police, and Minister of Defense Paulo Sergio Nogueira—were at the court to visit the new room. Members of international observation missions were also in attendance.