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🚨🇧🇷 Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin extended voting nationwide by two hours, to 7 p.m. Brasília time, after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's campaign reported bus shortages in nine states during Sunday's runoff against Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro.
🔸Electoral rules require cities to run free transit at weekday levels on election day. In Salvador, in Lula's northeastern stronghold, Bahia's electoral court ordered the arrest of the city's mobility secretary, Pablo Souza, for withholding buses. In São Paulo, a court had ordered Mayor Ricardo Nunes, a Bolsonaro ally, to put out the full fleet. Lula's campaign says still only about 60% of buses were running.
🔸 Zanin stepped in after justice Kassio Nunes Marques, who has faced criticism over his alleged bias in favor of Bolsonaro, failed to rule before 5 p.m. when voting was set to close, leading to scenes of confusion at polling locations as some sites were forced to reopen.
🔸 Lula told reporters he had never complained about an election, win or lose. "But this time something abominable is happening," he said, according to The Guardian.
🔸 The fallout could reach beyond a delayed count. Eloísa Machado de Almeida, a constitutional law professor at FGV in São Paulo, said that if mayors coordinated with the Bolsonaro campaign to keep people from voting, Flávio's ticket and any mandate it wins could be annulled, and he could be barred from running.
🔸 It's not the first time. In the 2022 runoff, which Lula narrowly won, federal highway police under then-President Jair Bolsonaro stopped buses carrying voters, mostly in the northeast.
🎥 Overcrowded bus garage in São Paulo's East Zone and Lula says right to vote is under attack across Brazil
