Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro is barred from office until 2030
Regardless of the punishment of Bolsonaro, I think there&#x27;s something more important to be discussed here.<p>Brazil&#x27;s Congress has passed laws determining that e-voting machines would have to print an anonymous proof of your vote, that is displayed to you behind a sealed acrylic viewport, so you can visually confirm it&#x27;s casting your vote correctly, and then after you press CONFIRM one last time the paper is deposited in a sealead container attached to the voting machine for future inspection by all the political parties.<p>Like this, we would have the best of both worlds: fast vote counting on election day due to e-voting, but an anonymous paper record that could be audited in the following months by all political parties.<p>I used LAWS in plural for a reason; our CONGRESS has passed not one, but TWO laws imposing this measure:<p>1) Law 12034&#x2F;2009<p>2) Law 13165&#x2F;2015<p>If you don&#x27;t believe me, just Google them.<p>What is amazing is that these two laws were deemed inconstitucional by our Supreme Court (?!). See [2].<p>So, in a democratic country with a functioning congress, the people&#x27;s representatives have spoken at least twice that they wanted the paper trail attached to our e-voting machines, for auditing purposes.<p>Brazil&#x27;s Congress is formed by 513 congressman + 81 senate members.<p>Regardless of that, our Supreme Court (11 seats) has deemed that these laws should not be put into place. Twice.<p>I find it also amazing that in 2009, the German Supreme Court decided the exact opposite of this: any e-voting system that doesn&#x27;t have a non eletronic auditing system was deemed unconstitucional[1].<p>The rationale was simple: elections should be able to be audited by the &quot;average joe&quot;, not only state employees or tech experts.<p>Bolsonaro was a fierce defender of the paper trail audit, which I also think we should have (we&#x27;re all hackers here and I don&#x27;t have to explain why I think that&#x27;s a nice-to-have).<p>If you are still in doubt (you are not right? this is hackernews), just compare the sophistication of exploits you can find in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;googleprojectzero.blogspot.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;googleprojectzero.blogspot.com&#x2F;</a> with the amateur mistakes that were made in the development of these e-voting machines (for instance, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NGmHrxvefNo">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NGmHrxvefNo</a>).<p>So I think there&#x27;s something very broken with a democracy in which the defense of a paper trail in e-voting machines is now considered an &#x27;attack against democracy&#x27;.<p>It&#x27;s one thing to say elections were stolen or that fraud happened; I&#x27;m not claiming that and, as a matter of fact, neither was Bolsonaro. But you can&#x27;t claim I&#x27;m attacking democracy just because I stand for a paper trail for auditing the e-voting system.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ndi.org&#x2F;e-voting-guide&#x2F;examples&#x2F;constitutionality-of-electronic-voting-germany" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ndi.org&#x2F;e-voting-guide&#x2F;examples&#x2F;constitutionalit...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.conjur.com.br&#x2F;2020-set-16&#x2F;supremo-confirma-liminar-impede-volta-voto-impresso" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.conjur.com.br&#x2F;2020-set-16&#x2F;supremo-confirma-limin...</a>