Brazil Counted Its Election in Under Four Hours on Paperless Machines. Analysts Say the U.S. Could Learn From It, and Critics Want Paper Receipts

Fox News takes a look at how Brazil votes, ahead of the U.S. midterms and a day before Brazil's presidential runoff.

The speed. About 125 million Brazilians voted Oct. 4 on machines that print no paper ballots, Fox reports. Less than four hours after polls closed, the country knew the race was headed to a runoff between conservative challenger Flavio Bolsonaro and leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro, a senator, finished first with 47 percent to Lula's 45 percent. The runoff is Sunday, Oct. 25, and the winner is expected to be known and certified in under five hours.

The safeguards. Brazil's Superior Electoral Court says there has been no proven fraud since the machines debuted in 1996. The 499,248 machines used Oct. 4 never connected to the internet. Their software was open to parties, universities and watchdogs for 11 months before being signed and sealed in public. Last December the government invited a record 149 outsiders to try to break the system, and evaluators concluded nothing they found could change results or reveal how anyone voted. Each machine prints its tally at closing and posts it outside the polling place with a QR code, so anyone can check it against the national count. Nearly 9 in 10 voters unlock the machines with a fingerprint.

The experts. Political scientist Karina Stange Calandrin called it "an extremely secure and safe system." Florencia Ferrer, whose firm has audited elections in 17 countries, said "it's obvious Washington and the remainder of the U.S. are way behind" on technology and security. Fox notes that U.S. elections run in thousands of local jurisdictions under 50 sets of state rules, and about 30 percent of 2024 ballots came by mail. Brazil has one national election authority, compulsory voting and no mail ballots.

The catch. Fox points out that Brazil's count runs partly on the kind of paperless machines President Trump has vowed to scrap. Trump's 2025 elections order did cite Brazil's biometric voter identification as an example. The Carter Center has said voters should at least see a printed version of their ballot, and Germany's top court ruled in 2009 that voters must be able to check their ballot without expert help. Fox adds that Paraguay, which adopted Brazil's machine in 2006, prints each vote.

The politics. Former President Jair Bolsonaro, now serving a 27-year sentence for plotting to overturn his 2022 loss, spent years attacking the machines without evidence. This year, for the first time, a Bolsonaro appointee ran the electoral court, Fox says.

Note for readers: the security claims come from Brazil's election court and analysts quoted by Fox. We have not independently audited the system, and Fox's report notes that "no voting system is perfect."