Pull up a chair, because this one starts over coffee: the president of Brazil's TSE, the country's top electoral court, Justice Kássio Nunes Marques, on Monday (Aug. 31) ordered the removal of social media posts by former congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, a son of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, in which he questions the security of Brazil's electronic voting machines. The deadline is tight, 24 hours, on pain of a fine. One caveat: it is a preliminary injunction, and the court's full bench still has to ratify it.
The spark came from abroad. After a CIA report was declassified and pointed to alleged manipulation of Venezuela's electronic voting system, Eduardo posted that the US intelligence files proved fraud in Venezuelan elections from 2004 to 2020, then brought the debate home. "Only in a dictatorship are there forbidden topics. So I ask: are Brazil's electronic voting machines really inviolable?", he wrote. According to InfoMoney, the CIA document makes no mention of Brazil at all.
What the ruling says
The order grants a request from the Brasil da Esperança federation, a coalition of the parties PT, PCdoB and PV. To the justice, the posts have a misleading character, because they transplant to Brazil a documented fact that concerns Venezuela alone. In his own words (translated):
"It transplants to the national context a fact documented as relating exclusively to Venezuela, promoting grave decontextualization apt to stir up distrust in the electorate about the integrity of the electoral process."
On Eduardo's question, Nunes Marques noted that it "does not seek an answer, but suggests one, playing the same persuasive role as a statement", as InfoMoney reported. Beyond the 24-hour takedown, Eduardo is barred from repeating, reposting or spreading any link between the company Smartmatic and Brazil's voting machines, and from making any other false claim that casts doubt on the voting system or the electoral court. The justice acted, G1 reports, because keeping the content up "on the eve of the start of campaign advertising" could lock in voters' sense of insecurity.
A soap opera with a new episode
The ruling was sent to the main platforms operating in Brazil, including Meta (Facebook and Instagram), X, Google (YouTube), TikTok and Rumble, so they block content repeating the Smartmatic link. InfoMoney reports that the specific takedown order was directed at X. The parties' lawsuit claims Eduardo, Senator and presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, and deputies Gustavo Gayer and Júlia Zanatta ran a coordinated disinformation drive against the machines between July 17 and 21.
To the TSE, this plot is a rerun: the court has rejected the Venezuela-Brazil voting machine link in 2017, 2020, 2022 and now in 2026, and says Smartmatic supplies neither machines nor software for Brazilian elections. The whole system, it says, is built and run by the electoral judiciary itself. Flávio, who cited the CIA report at a July meeting with diplomats in Brasília, admitted the error in an Aug. 28 interview on TV Globo: "I got it wrong, they didn't build the machines. I misspoke."
Where to follow: the posts in question sit on Eduardo's X profile, and the ruling has been sent to Meta, X, Google, TikTok and Rumble, which are expected to block similar content. The full decision is on the TSE website. The finale only arrives in October, when Brazil elects its next president.