Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, his party's candidate for Brazil's presidency, said on Thursday that he will recruit volunteers to act as his poll watchers on election day. The announcement came during his weekly livestream, 17 days before the first round on October 4.

The candidate said his campaign will soon launch a website where people can sign up. Volunteers will go through screening, accreditation and training. "There will be a quick lesson on how to monitor the voting machines, especially at the moment the machine closes," he said.

Flávio avoided alleging fraud in the electronic vote, an argument he had floated in July before denying he had attacked the electoral system, according to Folha de S.Paulo. This time he said the monitoring would stop people from voting in place of others. "We have to have our own people monitoring all over Brazil, to keep bad-faith people from voting in place of others and from committing illegal acts like those," he said.

His father's strategy

Poll watchers are already part of Brazilian electoral law. As O Globo reported, parties, federations and coalitions can accredit representatives to observe voting and the count, under rules set by the electoral courts.

The move repeats the strategy of his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, who launched a similar sign-up site during the 2022 campaign. According to Folha, the elder Bolsonaro repeatedly attacked the electronic voting machines, tried to push a printed-ballot bill through Congress in 2021 and, after losing the runoff, his party asked the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), which runs Brazilian elections, to void the second-round votes. The complaint became part of the coup-plot case that led to his prison sentence in 2025.

The race is close. A Datafolha poll released on Thursday shows President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) with 39% of first-round voting preferences against 36% for Flávio, and a statistical tie in a runoff, at 46% to 44%. The first round is scheduled for October 4.