Top Brazilian General Reportedly Backs Bolsonaro Effort To Undermine 2022 Elections

Brazil's defense minister reportedly suggested canceling the elections if changes aren't made to address the far-right president's baseless claims about ...

For months, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has peddled conspiracy theories about the integrity of his country’s voting system, setting the stage for the embattled right-wing leader to question the results of next year’s elections if he loses. Bolsonaro has even claimed that if Brazil’s Congress does not alter the constitution to overhaul its election system and add paper ballot receipts to its electronic voting system, Brazil “won’t do elections at all.” The potential dangers of that scenario became even starker Thursday morning, when one of Brazil’s largest newspapers reported that Gen. Walter Braga Netto ― an influential military leader and Bolsonaro ally who currently serves as Brazil’s minister of defense ― told key congressional leaders that “there would be no elections in 2022 if there were no printed and auditable vote.” The report from O Estado de S. Paulo (or Estadão) sent shock waves across Brazil, a country already on notice about the potential dangers of election fraud conspiracies. For months, Brazilians have worried that Bolsonaro, an admirer of former U.S. President Donald Trump, may be laying the groundwork for his own version of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and that such an episode would pose a far graver risk to Brazil’s comparably young democracy.