Brazil: Lula Overtakes Flávio as Voting Extension Sparks Debate Over Annulment

A court-ordered two-hour Brazil voting extension set off a legal controversy on a night when Lula ultimately beat Flávio Bolsonaro after the lead changed hands twice during the count. The data reviewed do not show that the extension decided the winner.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Sunday’s presidential runoff on October 25, on a day marked by the decision of Cristiano Zanin, a justice on Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF), to keep voting open until 7 p.m. Brasília time (6 p.m. ET). The order came after some polling stations had already closed, and it prompted warnings of possible legal challenges.

Flávio led for a while: how the count unfolded

According to a timeline published by UOL, Lula started out ahead. Flávio overtook him at 7:16 p.m., with 13.3% of ballots counted. At 8:27 p.m., with 48.4% counted, Lula regained the lead and held it until he was declared the winner at 9:10 p.m. All times are Brasília time.

Folha de S.Paulo documented a partial count with 15.06% of polling stations reporting in which Flávio had 50.08% of valid votes to Lula’s 49.92%. The newspaper put the second lead change at 8:26 p.m., one minute earlier than UOL. With 99.79% of ballots counted, it reported 51.76% for Lula and 48.24% for Flávio. Those figures reflect that update, not the 100% final tally.

Why the voting extension left polling stations on different schedules

Zanin ordered the scheduled 5 p.m. closing pushed back to 7 p.m. after complaints that voters were having trouble reaching polling places. According to Rádio Senado, the decision responded to a complaint by Lula’s coalition, Brasil Pronto para Mais, against the cities of Salvador, Feira de Santana and Lauro de Freitas, which it accused of failing to provide enough public transportation for voters. The broadcaster added that both campaigns had reported transportation problems, though in different places and circumstances.

Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign also asked, according to Exame’s live coverage, for voting hours to be extended in 17 municipalities in São Paulo, Paraná and Santa Catarina, and for the release of presidential results to be delayed until voting there had ended. CNN reported that the Bolsonaro campaign cited voters’ difficulty reaching polling stations because of heavy rain.

The problem came in carrying out the order: some polling stations had already closed. Zanin later clarified that the extension would apply only where voting was still under way, and that ballots from closed stations would be counted as usual.

Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) officially confirmed that voting continued only at locations where it had not ended by 5 p.m. It also said it would resume receiving tally sheets, totaling votes and releasing results after 7 p.m.

Did the Brazil voting extension hand Lula the win?

The sequence of the count does not support that conclusion. Flávio’s provisional lead documented by UOL began at 7:16 p.m., after the extension had ended. In addition, the time a vote is added to the count is not the time it was cast: the tally after 7 p.m. also included ballots cast before 5 p.m.

Proving that the extension changed the outcome would require knowing how many additional votes were cast because of it and showing that their split between the candidates was decisive. The partial counts reviewed do not provide that breakdown. What they do show is a temporary lead for Flávio and a later comeback by Lula.

Election lawyer Gustavo Guedes, interviewed by Poder360, called the extension inappropriate but argued that, because it was limited to stations that were still open, it could not change the national result. With 91.95% of polling stations tallied, Lula had 58,717,861 votes and Flávio 55,023,647, a gap of more than 3.6 million, according to TSE data compiled by Mix Vale. No official source has published how many people voted during the extension.

Annulment warnings and diverging views

Fernando Neisser, an electoral law professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, told Folha that the disparity between open and closed polling stations could lead to a request to annul the runoff. The newspaper noted that his remarks came before the TSE issued its clarification.

Another Folha report reflected a different assessment: Supreme Court justices acknowledged mistakes by the TSE and the STF in handling the extension and expected legal challenges, but at that point ruled out annulling the election.

Legal experts interviewed by Gazeta do Povo, for their part, said Zanin’s individual ruling opens a path for defeated candidates, for president or for governor, to seek to have the election annulled.

The ties between the justice and the president fueled the criticism. Zanin was Lula’s personal lawyer in the Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato) cases and led the legal team of his 2022 campaign before Lula himself appointed him to the Supreme Court in 2023. Opposition senators Jorge Seif and Marcel Van Hattem announced impeachment requests against Zanin, ND+ reported; Van Hattem cited a “clear indication of bias” stemming from that relationship. No court has ruled on that allegation.

The claim attributed to The New York Times

A social media post circulated attributing to The New York Times a warning about a possible annulment. Roundups of international coverage published by Terra and Metro 1 say the U.S. newspaper highlighted the confusion caused by the extension, but they do not mention any such warning. Because the original article could not be reviewed directly, the attribution remains unconfirmed. The controversy over the voting hours, however, is backed by official statements and by legal experts quoted in the Brazilian press.

The sources reviewed document a legal controversy and possible challenges, but no ruling annulling the election and no evidence that would allow Lula’s victory to be attributed to the extended voting hours.