US calls Brazil’s election a ‘model’ as President Bolsonaro alleges fraud

Bloomberg

The US embassy in Brasilia described Brazil’s elections as a “model for the world,” one day after President Jair Bolsonaro told foreign ambassadors that the country’s electronic voting system is subject to fraud.
Echoing comments made by President Joe Biden during a bilateral meeting with Bolsonaro last month, the embassy said in a statement late Tuesday that the US “trusts in the strength” of Brazil’s democratic institutions.
“The country has a strong track record of free and fair elections, with transparency and high levels of voter participation,” reads the statement published in Portuguese, without citing Bolsonaro or the meeting he hosted the previous day. “We are confident that Brazil’s 2022 elections will reflect the will of the electorate.”
Bolsonaro gathered representatives of about 70 foreign governments at his official residence to rehash old and debunked conspiracy theories about the security of the system Brazil has been using for more than two decades.
The far-right Brazilian leader, trailing former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in all major opinion polls, has repeatedly cast doubt about the integrity of the country’s electronic ballots, even claiming without proof that his 2018 election was rigged against him as he should have won it in the first round of voting. Yet the meeting went a step further as he thought to discredit the country’s electoral authority before a foreign audience.
Several Brazilian institutions have rebuked the president, including Brazil’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Luiz Fux.