🗳️ Brazil's electronic voting turns 30

Brazil's Superior Electoral Court shipped its first batch of electronic voting machines to regional offices on May 13, 1996, when most Brazilians still bought phone cards to use sidewalk payphones. Three decades later, the device has outlasted nearly every consumer technology of its era, as well as several coordinated efforts to convince voters that it cannot be trusted.

The milestone arrives as Brazil prepares for the 2026 general election under the shadow of an inherited paradox: the voting machines have, across 16 nationwide votes, never produced a single documented case of fraud — and yet, for nearly a decade, it has been the favorite casus belli of the pro-Bolsonaro far-right movement…

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