Mike Lindell hinted that Brazil’s presidential election results may not be sound while detailing concerns about the country’s voting machines.
In a clip shared on Twitter Wednesday, Lindell, an ally of former President Donald Trump, said on his “The Lindell Report” podcast that he had his “cyber guys” watching the election in Brazil. He did not say who these individuals were, or how they were monitoring the vote.
He also spoke about how “corrupt judges” voted down what he said was an attempt to have paper put into electronic voting machines so that it could print out “paper copies” that can be used to conduct an audit.
“So they have pure machines, everybody,” Lindell said. “When I say pure machines, there’s no paper…So whatever that tells you, whatever program is inside, here’s who won.”
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, was elected as Brazil’s new president in a runoff this week after neither he nor current President Jair Bolsonaro managed to secure 50 percent of votes in initial voting early last month. In a short speech on Tuesday, Bolsonaro did not concede the election or recognize Lula’s victory but did say that he would follow the Constitution in an apparent indication that he was prepared to leave office regardless.
Voting in Brazil’s elections has been conducted electronically for decades. In this election, votes were counted by the machines and then sent to a central office, the BBC reported. But the machines also print paper copies with vote totals for each candidate that are publicly displayed at polling sites after polls close.
Totals from each machine can also be compared with the totals that were recorded by an electoral court in Brazil.
However, there are no paper copies of individual ballots, the BBC reported. But this does not mean that Brazilian elections cannot be audited, since the machines can pull up votes in order to conduct an electronic recount.
While speaking on his podcast, Lindell said that he was friends with Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of Jair Bolsonaro’s children. Notably, Jair Bolsonaro has also called the integrity of Brazil’s voting machines into question by suggesting that the systems are “completely vulnerable” to fraud. Bolsonaro did not provide evidence for these claims.
Lindell more directly questioned the integrity of Brazil’s presidential election on Thursday while speaking in Sioux City, Iowa, where Trump is stopping on Thursday during a late-hour campaigning push for candidates on the ballot for the November 8 midterm elections.
