Delegation of US Specialists Accompanies Second Round of Brazilian election
WBO Press release October 28th
Five international experts will be in Brazil on a visit organized by the WBO (Washington Brazil Office) at the invitation of Regional Electoral Court in São Paulo
Members of the delegation will accompany the Ballot Box Integrity test and visit polling places
An international delegation of experts from the USA will accompany the second round of the Brazilian presidential elections on October 30th to learn about the local process and make available their own accumulated knowledge about the matter.
Among the members of the delegation, which will be in Brazil from October 27th to 31th, are Alexander Main and Guillaume Long, both from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) , an American think tank dedicated to democracy and economic policy. Long, in addition, was chancellor of Ecuador (2016-2017) under President Rafael Correa.
Also part of the delegation are Patrick Heller, director of the Research for Development Program at the Watson Institute for International Studies and Public Affairs at Brown University; Iman Musa Jaddalah, Director of Advocacy at the EBO (Washington Brazil Office); and Paulo Abrão, the WBO Executive Director.
The group is in Brazil at the invitation of the TRE (Regional Electoral Court) of São Paulo, along with other foreign delegations who are in the country for the same purpose. On the morning of October 29, the delegation will be present at the monitoring of the selection of the electronic ballot boxes, which will be the part of the Integrity Test. In the afternoon, the group will accompany a demonstration of how the electronic voting machines and the Brazilian electoral system operate. The following day, the international visitors will observe polling places and follow the process of publicizing electoral results.
"The Brazilian electoral process is accompanied by international observation missions of different types and from different entities. The WBO specifically supports this delegation of US experts, but it also participated in the visit of a group of human rights experts in the first round. All the efforts to provide greater transparency are welcome, especially in an election in which one of the candidates, the President of the Republic himself, spreads disinformation and unfounded accusations about a system that proves to be reliable and is trusted nationally and internationally," commented Abrão.
