Political violence Since the official beginning of the election campaign in August 2022 and before that, various political commentators said the incumbent president
Jair Bolsonaro incited physical, or
verbal violence, against his critics and political opponents, especially women, such as saying that he and his supporters "must obliterate" the opposition
Workers' Party, engaging in a
smear campaign of political commentators, journalists, or interviewers on his social media and speeches, and in one occasion trying to grab a phone from a disillusioned voter and YouTuber who confronted him in a rally. An
Amnesty International survey found that in the three months leading up to the first round on 2 October, there was at least one case of political violence every two days, with 88% of cases in September alone, including murders, threats against voters, physical assaults, and restrictions on freedom of movement for candidates. On 5 October, the Observatory of Political and Electoral Violence in Brazil of the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Unirio) had recorded at least 212 cases of political violence between July and September of this year, an increase of 110% compared to the previous quarter. According to the survey, leaders of 29 parties were hit by some kind of violence in the third quarter of 2022. The Workers' Party received the highest number of targets with 37 cases (17.5%), then there was the
Socialism and Liberty Party with 19 (9%), while the Global Justice and Land of Rights organizations recorded 247 episodes of political violence in 2022, a 400% increase in the number of cases recorded in 2018. At least 121 cases occurred between 1 August and 2 October. According to
Agência Pública, there were at least 32 episodes of intimidation or violence against interviewers from research institutes, such as
Datafolha, Ipec, and Quaest, until 5 October.
Notable cases June–August In June, a Bolsonaro supporter was arrested after throwing fireworks against Lula supporters during a political act of the Workers' Party in Cinelândia, Rio de Janeiro. On 10 July,
city guard Marcelo Aloizio de Arruda, a Workers' Party activist, was murdered for political reasons during his birthday party at a community centre located in
Foz do Iguaçu in the state of
Paraná. Jorge Guaranho, a federal
prison officer, was arrested after storming the victim's party shouting that he was a supporter of Bolsonaro, and shooting at Arruda. The shooter was also injured during the attack due to
self-defense exercised by the victim. Based on an incorrect statement from the local police, some media outlets mistakenly reported that the men killed each other. The police later backtracked from the statement, and stated instead that Guaranho had been hospitalized. Arruda was survived by his wife and four young children. In the hours following the murder, politicians—including some 2022 presidential candidates—and authorities condemned the attack, with some of them calling for calm. Also on 10 July, the local police opened an investigation into the crime's motivation; a day later, the police chief officer leading the probe was found to have previously made online posts against the Workers' Party, potentially violating
due process because of
abuse of power, which unofficially caused her to be removed from the investigation. On 11 July, a judge ordered the pre-trial arrest of the suspect, and after four days the local police concluded that there was no political motivation for the crime. On 18 July, both the prosecutors and Arruda's family disputed the conclusions, citing the fact that the police did not search the shooter's phone and did not investigate a possible connection with the suicide of a security service worker in the community centre who had allegedly sent the party footage to the suspect. The following day, the judge overseeing the case ordered the police to redo the inquiry taking into account those claims. On 20 July, the prosecutors charged Guaranho with
first degree murder for political reasons, and he was bound over for trial. On 10 August, following his discharge from a hospital, Guaranho was temporarily placed under
house arrest and ordered to wear an
ankle monitor. He was sent to prison two days later, and he was denied a release from jail on 13 August. In August, a datafolha interviewer was chased in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, by four men. Shouting "communist" and "leftist", the men tried to pick up the tablet she used to conduct the research. a supporter of former president
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 70 times, after both had been arguing over politics for hours on the same day and the situation escalated to a physical altercation. During the fight, Oliveira reportedly took a knife and started stabbing Santos in his eyes, forehead and neck, after Santos had punched Oliveira in the chin, according to the local police. Following the murder, the suspect tried to behead the victim's body with an axe but eventually gave up and went to a local healthcare centre seeking medical assistance, where he was seen by a doctor and subsequently arrested by the police. Oliveira was also under criminal investigations for unrelated crimes such as
homicide,
rape, and
fraud, according to the police and a court ruling.
September–October On 13 September, farmer Luiz Carlos Ottoni, a 44-year-old Bolsonaro supporter, attacked city
councilwoman Cleres Relevante of the Workers' Party and her aide in
Salto do Jacuí, a small city in the southern state of
Rio Grande do Sul. Ottoni used his car to hit hers after reportedly following Relevante and her aide on their way back her home. Relevante told the police that right before the
car attack, she noticed she and her aide were being followed by a car that occasionally kept doing
burnouts, unexpected speed-ups and stops, as if to intimidate them. The car eventually rammed the back of hers and fled the scene. She called the police, who chased the attacker but were later informed that he had fatally suffered an accident while trying to escape the
manhunt. On 19 September, a group of Bolsonaro supporters verbally abused, kicked and punched a blind man who was wearing a Lula campaign button as he took the subway in the city of
Recife, in the northeastern state of
Pernambuco. The victim's wife said that her husband had a seizure due to the assault while he was at the hospital for a first appointment and that he had to remain hospitalized for three days, after which he was released but for the following week he could not get out of his bed by himself. On 20 September, an election survey interviewer was assaulted by a Bolsonaro supporter while the victim was interviewing another person. The suspect also heckled the interviewer several times during the survey before his son joined him in the attack. Pollster
Datafolha, the victim's employer, said that there had been at least ten similar cases since the campaign officially started in August 2022. On 24 September, Antônio Carlos Silva, a farm worker, was murdered after he answered a question made by Edmilson Freire, a Bolsonaro supporter. According to eye-witnesses, Freire entered a
bar and shouted "who supports Lula?", for which Silva said he would vote for Lula, then Freire stabbed him in the
ribs. Silva was seen by a doctor but did not survive the injury. Freire, who reportedly has criminal records for unrelated
domestic violence, was arrested. On the same day, Hildor Henker, a Bolsonaro supporter, was stabbed in a bar in
Rio do Sul, in the southern state of
Santa Catarina, after he had gotten into an argument about "politics and old family problems" with a Workers' Party supporter, whose name was not released by the police. Henker, who was wearing a Bolsonaro shirt, reportedly hit the Workers' Party supporter in the face, and the latter grabbed Henker by the neck, took him out of the bar, and stabbed him in the leg after a fight, hitting his
femoral artery. Henker ran across the bar, bleeding, and collapsed due to his wounds. He was taken to the hospital but died the next day. According to the police, the suspect escaped the scene and went back to his home, and as of 27 September he was still wanted by the police. On 25 September,
Paulo Guedes, a federal lawmaker for the Workers' Party, suffered an assassination attempt during a
motorcade rally in
Montes Claros in the southeastern state of
Minas Gerais. Guedes was reportedly at the top of a campaign rally truck when a
police officer in plainclothes shot at the rally from the back seat of a car. The
Federal Police of Brazil later arrested and indicted the officer for two counts: election campaign harassment and unlawful discharge of a firearm. On 4 October, José Roberto Gomes Mendes, a 59-year-old Bolsonaro supporter, was murdered after an argument over politics with Luiz Antonio Ferreira da Silva, a 42-year-old Workers' Party supporter, inside their home in the city of
Itanhaém, in the state of
São Paulo. During the argument, Mendes allegedly attacked Silva with a knife, and during the fight, Silva used the same knife to stab Mendes. The police later arrived at the scene and found that Mendes had died of his wounds. Silva confessed the crime to the police. On 12 October, Bolsonaro visited the
Basilica of Our Lady of Aparecida in São Paulo to accompany the religious celebrations. Supporters of the president promoted riots outside the time and attacked journalists who were covering the ceremony including those of the
TV Aparecida, which is owned by the church, and the
TV Vanguarda, which is affiliated to the
TV Globo. They also attacked a man with a red shirt and booed an
archbishop who spoke out against hunger. On 13 August 2021, former lawmaker and Bolsonaro ally
Roberto Jefferson was arrested due to his verbal threats to government officials and institutions. In January 2022, he was allowed to be moved to
house arrest for health reasons under the conditions that he would not maintain external communication or receive visits other than by family members. Jefferson violated these conditions multiple times, and he attempted to be a presidential candidate in the 2022 election under the
Brazilian Labour Party but was ruled ineligible due to a previous criminal conviction and was replaced by Kelmon Souza as his party's candidate. On 21 October, Jefferson released a video, through his daughter
Cristiane Brasil, where he insulted Supreme Federal Court judge
Cármen Lúcia due to rulings that she issued in the 2022 presidential election. Due to Jefferson's multiple violations of his house arrest conditions, Supreme Federal Court judge
Alexandre de Moraes ordered his return to prison. On 23 October, Jefferson violently resisted the
arrest warrant being carried out by Federal Police agents, who were met with gunfire and two
grenades thrown by him. Some of the agents were injured during the
siege, subsequently hospitalized, and later released. Hours after negotiating his surrender terms along with other Bolsonaro allies present in his house, Jefferson turned himself in to the police and was later indicted for four attempted homicides of the agents that he had attacked earlier.
Disinformation Disinformation became a major topic in the 2022 elections, since experiences from previous elections, especially in 2018, led to new approaches by individuals, including electoral officials, as well as private and public
institutions amid a surge in the use of fake news to discredit political opponents and the electoral system itself. In that context, the Superior Electoral Court issued several law-like guidances regarding disinformation, such as further banning
political ads on the internet, and tightening penalties for online breaches of the electoral law. In October 2021, after an investigation by the police and prosecutors, the Superior Electoral Court ruled that
Fernando Francischini, a hard-liner lawmaker in the southern state of
Paraná and ally of Bolsonaro, had violated electoral law by making false claims about the electronic voting system in 2018. The court removed him from his seat in the state legislature and banned him from elected office for the next eight years. Francischini filed an appeal against the ruling but it was later dismissed by the Supreme Federal Court. On 20 September 2022, the Superior Electoral Court reported that it had received more than 15,500 election-related disinformation complaints over the prior four months. On 24 September, an incident of
bulk messaging was reported in the state of
Paraná, which was governed by an ally of Bolsonaro. Several phone users said that they had received a message from the official state alert-messaging service, which read: "Bolsonaro is gonna win the elections in the first round! Otherwise, we are going to the streets to protest! We're gonna storm the Supreme Court and the Congress buildings! President Bolsonaro counts on us all!!" The Superior Electoral Court referred the alleged breach to prosecutors so they could investigate if any electoral crime was committed, and if so, to identify its perpetrators.
Electoral fraud allegations Bolsonaro alleged that
electronic voting in Brazil was prone to
vote rigging since at least 2015, when he was a member of the
Chamber of Deputies, and successfully pushed for a bill requiring voting machines to also print vote records. Brazil's
Public Prosecutor's Office challenged the law citing
secret ballot concerns, and the
Supreme Federal Court suspended the law in June 2018. During the 2018 elections, several social media platforms were flooded with fake claims that electronic ballots had been set up to favor candidates other than Bolsonaro, and that he had allegedly won the presidential election in the first round. After investigating those claims, authorities and forensic experts ruled out any fraud in the ballots, and concluded that some videos shared online were manipulated and edited to spread those allegations. As president, Bolsonaro also insisted on voter fraud claims and pushed for an
election audit, despite the voting machines already being audited and the vote counts being publicly available for verification. Since 2018, some social media companies, such as
YouTube,
Facebook, and
Twitter, restricted or removed videos, livestreams, campaign advertisements, online groups and channels, online-content monetization, and posts from Bolsonaro, his allies, and supporters linked to election-related
disinformation,
insurrection, and incitement to
violence on their own or by a
court order for violating laws or those companies' policies. Despite signing agreements with the
Superior Electoral Court in which they committed to fight disinformation, social networks acted slowly or ignored requests to remove it. In July 2022, Bolsonaro addressed dozens of foreign diplomats, to whom he made several claims of vulnerabilities in the country's electronic voting system. Following the presentation, the electoral authority issued a statement debunking several of the claims mentioned by Bolsonaro. Brazilian and international law experts, political analysts, and authorities warned that such allegations undermined
democracy and paved the way for an unfounded election result challenge or a
self-coup, such as the
2021 United States Capitol attack. Many experts also feared that if Bolsonaro lost the election, the military and local police officers, who helped carry out the
1964 Brazilian coup d'état and were heavily present in his government, could play a significant role in either blocking a
peaceful transition of power or being complicit with possible rioters trying to overthrow a newly elected administration. On 28 September, four days prior to the first round of the elections, Bolsonaro's
Liberal Party released a statement saying a party report found that there were "several flaws" in the election process conducted by the Superior Electoral Court, adding, without providing any evidence, that the court met only "5% of the all the requirements for a proper election certification". The court dismissed those claims as "false and misleading and meant to disturb the electoral process", and ordered an investigation into the authors of party's report.
Reactions to potential coup On 26 July, the
faculty of law of the
University of São Paulo launched a pro-democracy petition as a response to Bolsonaro's criticism of the electronic ballots and the Brazilian voting system in general with over 3,000 signatures, among intellectuals, artists, law experts including retired justices of the Supreme Federal Court, businesspeople, and others. On 30 July, the petition topped 540,000 signatures, and four days later reached 700,000 endorsements. On 17 August, a report by Brazilian newspaper
Metrópoles leaked an online conversation by a group of pro-Bolsonaro businessmen who expressed their preference for a
coup d'état rather than a return of
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the presidency. The businessmen stated that the Supreme Federal Court and the Superior Electoral Court were suspected of election fraud, and proposed that a separate commission recount the votes. The messages also showed that business leader José Koury floated the idea of paying a bonus to employees who voted according to their employers' interests, if it were legal, and that malls chain businessman ordered "thousands of little flags" to be distributed to shopkeepers and customers in Barra World Shopping, one of his company's malls. In response to the report, the businessmen declared their support for democracy and denied any encouragement of illegal activity. On 23 August, by order of the Supreme Federal Court, the Federal Police carried out
search and seizure warrants on the homes, offices, and other properties of the businessmen who allegedly supported a potential coup, including Koury, Peres, and billionaire
Luciano Hang, among others. The court also ordered a freeze in their bank and social media accounts, their testimonies, and access to their
financial records. The businessmen stated that this order constituted political persecution and an attack on their freedom of speech.
International reactions On 9 June, Bolsonaro and U.S. president
Joe Biden met during the
Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. Anonymous sources reported to
Bloomberg News that Bolsonaro asked for Biden's help with the elections, saying that a possible administration of former president Lula would be against U.S. interests. Biden changed the subject when approached but emphasized the importance of keeping the integrity of Brazil's elections. Bolsonaro answered that he respected democracy and would respect the election results. Biden's response echoed the comments made by
Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, the U.S. ambassador to Brazil nominated by Biden. Portuguese/Spanish-language spokesperson of the
U.S. Department of State, Kristina Rosales, argued that the elections needed to be transparent and monitored by international observers. Brazil's justice minister
Anderson Torres responded that international observers were of little help and favored the participation of the Federal Police, the
Brazilian Armed Forces, and civil society in the elections. In a June 2022 speech about
human rights in various countries,
Michelle Bachelet, the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, cited concerns in Brazil, such as threats to environmentalists and
indigenous people, police violence, racism, and attacks against politicians, especially
Afro-Brazilians,
women, and
LGBT people, ahead of the elections in October. She also appealed to the Brazilian authorities to ensure respect for fundamental rights and independent institutions. On 6 July, it was reported that members of the
U.S. House of Representatives affiliated with the
Democratic Party called for measures that would suspend American aid to the Brazilian Army if it intervened in the election. The amendment author,
Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, withdrew the requirement with no opposition on the House floor from any representative except for
Adam Schiff of California. On 20 July,
Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State,
Ned Price, was asked about the meeting with foreign diplomats hosted by Bolsonaro on 18 July, when Bolsonaro made disputed claims about the Brazilian electoral system. Price responded that U.S. officials had spoken with senior Brazilian officials about the electronic voting system, that the U.S. view was that the Brazilian electoral system was successfully tested for many years and was a model for other nations, and that the United States would follow the elections with great interest. During the International Ministerial Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief in July 2022 held in London, Hungary's
Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Péter Szijjártó, requested a meeting with Brazil's
Minister of Women, Families, and Human Rights,
Cristiane Britto, to learn more about the electoral environment. Britto commented about polarization and cited perceived similarities in the views of both countries regarding family issues. Szijjártó asked if there was anything that Hungary could do to help in Bolsonaro's re-election, and said that Brazil had the largest Hungarian community in
Latin America and that it mostly supported the incumbent president. On 29 September, the
U.S. Senate passed a resolution co-sponsored by Senators
Bernie Sanders of Vermont and
Tim Kaine of Virginia, in which they called for the respect of the Brazilian election results and stressed that the United States would not support "any government that comes to power through undemocratic means".
Voter suppression attempts On 27 September, it was reported that some public transportation companies, most of them bus companies, as well as city administrations whose mayors were Bolsonaro allies, could either suspend some buses operations, claim a lack of funding for
free travel passes that were usually granted to voters on election day, or order the vehicles sabotaged and engage in
voter suppression. Poor and extremely poor voters, among whom Lula had been leading in the polls, were supposed to be the main target of this strategy, since they could only resort to
public transportation on their way to the
polling stations and back home.
In the first round Despite some city administrations and Senator
Randolfe Rodrigues asking the Supreme Federal Court to grant free rides for voters on election day,
Porto Alegre, a major city in southern Brazil whose mayor was a Bolsonaro supporter, announced that it was going to cut free travel passes because of "budgetary costs" for the first time in 25 years; after intense scrutiny by critics and politicians, it gave up on the plan. On 29 September, the Supreme Federal Court issued an injunction blocking public transportation operations from being reduced on election day. On 1 October, the Bolsonaro campaign asked the Superior Electoral Court to immediately block free travel passes in the public transportation system, arguing that the Supreme Federal Court's previous decision would hurt the cities' finances since the costs of free rides on election day were allegedly not anticipated and previously agreed upon by their legislatures. The Superior Electoral Court rejected the request, saying that no additional costs were created for the cities.
Intimidation of voters Voter intimidation, which includes coercion, threats of retaliation,
workplace harassment, or a
promotion at work, is both an electoral and a labor crime in Brazil. It can also be considered a form of
electoral fraud, voter suppression and
workplace bullying. Reports of such crime, of which the main targets are employees, contractors and suppliers, have grown in the country since at least early 2022. On 19 May, Havan, a retail chain, and its owner, billionaire
Luciano Hang, were both ordered to pay damages to a former employee of the company after a court found that she had suffered workplace harassment as a way to force her to vote for Bolsonaro. On 5 October, the Public Prosecutor's Office and a labor court issued a joint statement warning employers against voter intimidation in the workplace after Stara and Extrusor, two companies based in southern Brazil, had sent their suppliers a memorandum threatening to cut their production and funds from 2023 on in the event that former president Lula were elected in 2022. There were also reports of a
brickworks in northern Brazil that publicly offered each of its employees cash if Jair Bolsonaro were re-elected, and of an agriculture businesswoman in northeastern Brazil who was charged with asking farmers to "have no mercy" in firing employees who voted for Lula. On 10 October, an agribusiness leader and husband of a mayor in the state of
Goiás sent farmers a voicenote threatening to shut his business if former president Lula were elected president, and saying that his employees "were desperate" to get people to change their minds not to vote for Lula in order to keep their jobs. On 11 October, the Labor Prosecutor's Office reported that it had received nearly 200 complaints of voter intimidation since the beginning of the election campaign in August 2022. As of 21 October, there had been 1,112 reports of voter intimidation in 2022, far higher than a total of 212 reports in the 2018 elections, which made many prosecutors open joint tasks forces to investigate the cases. On 22 October, employees of a
meatpacking company based in southeastern Brazil denounced that they were forced among other things to wear pro-Bolsonaro shirts while at work, reportedly violating several
food safety rules, besides the electoral law.
In the second round On 30 October, reports spread on social media of
Federal Highway Police (PRF) engaging in unusual patterns of stops in poorer areas of the country that were expected to favour Lula, leading to calls for the close-of-polling hour to be pushed back. The number of police searches of vehicles was 80 percent higher than had been recorded on 2 October, the day of the first round of voting, and directly violated an order from
Superior Electoral Court president
Alexandre de Moraes to suspend such activities on Election Day. Stops disproportionately took place in the
Northeast Region, which has historically recorded the strongest vote for the Workers' Party. Police roadblocks also created a traffic jam on the
Rio–Niterói Bridge. Workers' Party supporters immediately called the actions an attempt of electoral subversion.
O Globo reported that the director of the PRF,
Silvinei Vasques, had posted and then deleted a video on
Instagram endorsing Bolsonaro the previous night.
O Globo additionally reported that the operation had been discussed in the office of President Bolsonaro on 19 October, suggesting it was performed at his direction. Activists made an appeal to Moraes, who ordered an immediate halt to the operations and subpoenad Vasques; however, Moraes claimed the operations did not stop anyone from voting and rejected a request from the PT to extend voting hours beyond the 5 pm deadline. Vasques was then arrested on 10 August 2023.
Environmental issues Some commentators noted the importance of this election for the
Amazon rainforest, as well as
climate change. On 23 September, the British environmental-focused website
Carbon Brief released a report made by researchers at the
University of Oxford, the
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and the Brazilian
National Institute for Space Research showing that deforestation in the
Brazilian Amazon could be reduced by 89% if Lula were elected in 2022 and his environmental policy continued until 2030. The report said that Lula's enforcement of the
Brazilian Forest Code, the country's flagship legislation for tackling deforestation in the Amazon and other ecosystems, would curb forest clearings and could also reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, a re-election of Bolsonaro would likely see the pace of deforestation accelerate in the coming years, including what one of the report authors described as huge areas beyond the scope of the Forest Code.
Views and endorsements On 3 September, medical journal
The Lancet published an
editorial calling the stakes in the Brazilian elections high and highlighting among other things that Bolsonaro, described as someone "who is known for his volatility and indirect incitement of violence, will not go quietly" if he were not re-elected as predictions pointed to, and that "he has already criticised Brazil's electronic voting system in the presence of foreign ambassadors". It concluded by saying "there is an unprecedented chance for new beginnings in Latin America; an opportunity to make positive changes to alleviate deep neglect, inequality, and violence. Let us hope that Brazil chooses to seize this opportunity." On 25 October, ahead of the second round, British weekly scientific journal
Nature published an editorial in which it said that a second term for incumbent Bolsonaro would "represent a threat to science, democracy and the environment", and cited Bolsonaro's similarities to former U.S. president
Donald Trump, both of whom it said "have sought to undermine the
rule of law and slash the powers of regulators" and "ignored scientists' warnings about
COVID-19 and denied the dangers of the disease." It concluded by stating that "Brazil's voters have a valuable opportunity to start to rebuild what Bolsonaro has torn down. If Bolsonaro gets four more years, the damage could be irreparable." == Opinion polls ==