Brazil Replaced 1,544 Electronic Voting Machines During First-Round Vote

Overview

• The Tribunal Superior Eleitoral reported that 1,544 electronic voting machines had been replaced by 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, October 4, representing 0.28% of 499,248 deployed machines and leaving 50,038 spare units available.
• Electoral officials said most substitutions reflected operational failures but did not provide a detailed breakdown of specific causes.
• Local election bodies logged targeted incidents including seven machine swaps in Acre and one in Candelária, Rio Grande do Sul, where the number-3 key was reportedly glued and later investigated.
• Authorities confirmed votes recorded before replacements were preserved and that the legal contingency of voting on paper ballots has not been needed so far.
• More than 158 million voters were eligible in the first round, a scale that election officials say was covered by spare-equipment planning, and minor electoral-law violations detected during the morning were referred to the Federal Police for follow-up.