BREAKING: Bolsonaro files official court challenge to annul Brazil's election

Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro has launched a challenge to the presidential election he recently lost to former and now President-elect Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro argues that there are votes from some machines that should be "invalidated," reports Reuters.

Lula's win has already been ratified by the Superior Electoral Court, he's been congratulated by international leaders like Canada's Justin Trudeau and US President Joe Biden. But Bolsonaro's supporters protested post-election and continue to do so, not believing that Lula, a man who served as president and was convicted on corruption charges only to have a court throw them out, could actually have won the election.



The justice who leads the Superior Electoral Court, Alexandrew de Moraes, issued a ruling that reads that "Bolsonaro's right-wing electoral coalition, which filed the complaint, must present its full audit for both rounds of last month's vote within 24 hours, or he would reject it," Reuters reports.

Reuters goes on to quote financial execs, and those with the Lula campaign, all of whom dismiss Bolsonaro's challegenge. Head of private investment partnership FB Capital said that the bid by Bolsonaro would be unlikely to succeed, but that it also adds "pessimism on top of everything we already have."

The head of Lula's Workers Party said the bid was mere "chicanery." She advocated for the challenge to not proceed, and for Brazil to let the results that saw her pick put in power to stand.

"No more procrastination, irresponsibility, insults to institutions and democracy," she wrote on Twitter. "The election was decided in the vote and Brazil needs peace to build a better future."

But for Bolsonaro and his coaltion, the challenge is as a result of the runoff election, during which they say there were "signs of irreparable ... malfunction" in some electric voting machines.

The two candidates went head to head in a first round of voting on October 2, though neither gained more than half of the votes, which led to Sunday's runoff vote. More than 156 million people were eligible to vote in the election.

The complaint reads that "'There were signs of serious failures that generate uncertainties and make it impossible to validate the results generated' in older models of the voting machines, Bolsonaro allies said in their complaint. As a result, they urged that the votes from those models should be 'invalidated.'"

Incumbent Jair Bolsonaro won 49.17 percent of the vote, compared to 50.83 by da Silva, who was convicted in 2017 for money laundering though a court threw out his conviction in March 2021.