Brazil: Third-place finisher roils Brazil presidential campaign | Los Angeles Times

The former front-runner in Brazil’s presidential campaign shook up the race again Thursday when she unexpectedly withheld an endorsement for center-right candidate Aecio Neves, who is challenging incumbent Dilma Rousseff. Marina Silva had turned the race on its head this summer when she stepped in to take the place of the Socialist Party candidate, who was killed in a plane crash. After a brief reign as front-runner, she was reduced to the role of spoiler when she finished third in the election’s first round, on Sunday. But on Thursday, she appeared to step back from even that position when she canceled plans to announce an endorsement, which had been expected to be for Neves. She said she needed more commitments from the candidate, who will take on Rousseff in an Oct. 16 runoff.

Brazil: Presidential Vote Headed for Runoff | Wall Street Journal

Brazil’s presidential race is headed to a second round after President Dilma Rousseff won the most votes on Sunday but failed to clinch the majority she needed to win a second term outright. The leftist Ms. Rousseff will face the more conservative Aécio Neves in a runoff on Oct. 26. The volatile election campaign was marked by big swings in polls and the death of a candidate in an August plane crash. With 94% of the vote counted, Ms. Rousseff had won 41% compared with 34% for Mr. Neves. Marina Silva, an environmentalist, took 21%. Ms. Silva briefly led in polls after joining the race late to replace the Socialist Party’s Eduardo Campos, who died in the crash. “We’re on a roller coaster,” said André Cesar, a political consultant based in the capital, Brasília.

Brazil: Court dismisses hacker threat at presidential vote | BBC

On the eve of Brazil’s presidential election, the Superior Electoral Court has dismissed reports that the country’s electronic voting system is vulnerable to hacking. The court’s president, Jose Dias Toffoli, has acknowledged that hackers make frequent attempts to break into the electronic ballots. But the system was “safe and fraud-proof”, Mr Toffoli said. More than 142 million Brazilians will go to the polls on Sunday. … O Globo newspaper has reported that the voting machines were the target of 200,000 cyber attacks per second two weeks ago.

Brazil: Fraud possible in Brazil’s e-voting system | ZDNet

Flaws found in the Brazilian electronic voting system could open up the possibility of fraud as more than 140 million people go to the polls in the general elections taking place on Sunday. E-voting was introduced in Brazil in 1996 as a means to ensure secrecy and accuracy of the election process, as well as speed: the system underpinned by about 530,000 voting machines currently in place enables results to be processed within a matter of minutes within closing of the ballots. However, a public test of the equipment conducted by security and encryption specialists from Unicamp and Universidade de Brasília, two of the top computer science universities in Brazil, suggests that it is possible to easily break the secrecy of the machine and unscramble the order of votes recorded by the device.

Brazil: Gauging Brazil’s election: Crunch time | The Economist

IT IS hard to make predictions, the old saying goes, especially about the future. When future involves Brazil’s presidential race, the first round of which takes place on October 5th, the task is harder still. That has not stopped number-crunchers trying. Neale El-Dash of PollingData.com.br, a website, has made a valiant attempt at “tropicalising” Nate Silver, a statistician and blogger who rose to stardom during the 2012 US election. Mr Silver took polls released each week, then aggregated and weighted them to come up with a prediction, framed in terms of probability of victory for the main contenders. Our chart shows how Brazilian hopefuls’ chances, calculated in a similar fashion by Mr El-Dash, have shaped up since the campaign was upended by the tragic death in a plane crash in mid-August of Eduardo Campos, a centrist candidate.

Brazil: Fraud possible in Brazil’s e-voting system | ZDNet

Flaws found in the Brazilian electronic voting system could open up the possibility of fraud as more than 140 million people go to the polls in the general elections taking place on Sunday. E-voting was introduced in Brazil in 1996 as a means to ensure secrecy and accuracy of the election process, as well as speed: the system underpinned by about 530,000 voting machines currently in place enables results to be processed within a matter of minutes within closing of the ballots. However, a public test of the equipment conducted by security and encryption specialists from Unicamp and Universidade de Brasília, two of the top computer science universities in Brazil, suggests that it is possible to easily break the secrecy of the machine and unscramble the order of votes recorded by the device. “Brazilians unconditionally believe the [security of the] country’s electoral authority and processes. The issue is that common citizens actually have no other option because of the lack of independent checks,” says Unicamp professor and encryption specialist, Diego Aranha.

Brazil: Election swings between hope and fear | Financial Times

Financial markets in the developed world do not seem to care. For the most part, they have shrugged off chaos in the Middle East, Russian incursions into Ukraine and democracy protests in Hong Kong. In the emerging world, however, political events can still move markets big time. This year the Indian and Indonesian stock markets have risen more than 20 per cent thanks to the electoral victory of more market-friendly governments. A similar pattern is taking shape in Brazil, only in reverse. Over the summer local markets soared on hopes the opposition would unseat Dilma Rousseff of the governing Workers party at the presidential election, which kicks off on Sunday. But this week opinion polls showed President Rousseff widening her lead, dashing hopes of an end to another four years of her interventionist policies. Investor gloom is now such that Brazil’s currency fell more last month than Russia’s rouble.

Brazil: Death Lifts Opposition in Brazil Vote | Wall Street Journal

Brazil’s Socialist Party, whose dark-horse presidential candidate died in a plane crash last week, now has a chance of making it to a runoff and even winning the October election, a new poll showed on Monday. Barely a week ago, Marina Silva was a vice-presidential hopeful running with Eduardo Campos, who was polling a distant third with about 8% of the vote at the time of his death, leaving Ms. Silva poised to take his place at the top of the ticket. The survey by polling firm Datafolha showed Ms. Silva—whose candidacy hasn’t yet been officially announced by her party, but is widely expected in coming days—not only appears be a stronger candidate than Mr. Campos, but would have a viable shot at defeating incumbent President Dilma Rousseff of the leftist Workers’ Party in the event of a second-round runoff vote.

Brazil: Candidate’s death makes runoff more likely, pressures Rousseff | Reuters

The death of presidential candidate Eduardo Campos makes it even more likely Brazil’s October election goes to a second round and could put President Dilma Rousseff under more pressure as she seeks a second term. Campos died in a plane crash on Wednesday and his running mate Marina Silva is expected to pick up the baton and run for president herself. She is a popular figure who won 19.3 percent of the vote when she ran in 2010. Silva has greater name recognition and more supporters than Campos had given that the campaign is still in its early stages. Her candidacy could give his Brazilian Socialist Party a boost and deprive Rousseff of votes she needs to avoid a second-round runoff against her main contender, Senator Aecio Neves.

Brazil: Presidential election: Winning hearts and likes | The Economist

In June Brazil’s elites received a rude introduction to the power of social media. Protests, many convened via Facebook, saw millions take to the streets to air disaffection with politicians. Those same politicians now want to harness social networks for their election campaigns. Just before Dilma Rousseff was elected president in 2010, 6m Brazilians used Facebook at least once a month. As they gear up for a presidential poll in October, 83m do. Only the United States and India have bigger Facebook populations. One Brazilian in ten tweets; one in five uses Whatsapp—part messaging service, part social network. Cyberspace is seen as a crucial battleground for the election, even before campaigning officially starts on July 6th. In September, shortly after the protests petered out, Ms Rousseff reactivated her Twitter account, dormant since the 2010 election. She has also joined Instagram and Vine, two image-sharing sites, and revamped her Facebook profile. Last month Ms Rousseff’s Workers’ Party (PT) held its first workshop for activists on how best to use social networks. It plans 13 more in the coming months.

Brazil: Smartmatic Wins Election Services in Brazil, the Largest Market in Latin America | GNT

Smartmatic Has Been Awarded a Contract with the Superior Electoral Court of Brazil (TSE) for the Continuous Preventive Maintenance, Testing and Support Services of Its Electronic Voting Machines. Smartmatic, a global provider of electoral solutions, announced today it has been awarded a contract with the Superior Electoral Court of Brazil (TSE) for the continuous preventive maintenance, testing and support services of the electronic voting machines during the elections. After rigorous testing and evaluation of proposals, the bid was awarded to the ESF Consortium -composed by Smartmatic Brasil Ltda and Smartmatic International Corporation, with local partners Engetec and Fixti. The ESF Consortium presented the best offer and fully complied with all legal and technical requirements stated by the Brazilian Superior Electoral Court (TSE), in the tender process that began on May 30th.

Brazil: Indian Voting Machines With Paper Trails to Be Field-tested | PCWorld

India’s Election Commission plans to test in July new electronic voting machines (EVMs) that will offer a voter a verifiable paper trail, following criticism from political parties and activists that the machines could be tampered with. But it is unclear whether the paper records of the vote will be discarded or saved after the voter has checked if his vote has been properly recorded. Some local newspaper reports in April said that the paper records would be destroyed after the voter had checked his vote.

The paper records should be saved and used in a recount or if any other dispute arises, said Hari Prasad, the security researcher who along with other researchers released a video last year that they said demonstrated vulnerabilities in the EVMs.

Brazil: India will try out the Brazilian model of voting in future | DNA

The technology called Voter Verifiable Paper Trail (VVPT), a supplement to the existing EVM system, will be piloted in some polling stations in near future.

“We’ll experiment VVPT in 200 polling stations in places with extreme weather conditions like Ladakh in the presence of all political parties. If they approve, this can be a reality in future,” chief election commissioner SY Quraishi told journalists at a press conference after emerging from the 7th Regional Consultation for Electoral Reforms held in Guwahati on Sunday.

Brazil: Brazil makeover for Indian polls | Hindustan Times

The Election Commission is set to add a bit of Samba to Indian elections. The seventh and final regional consultation for electoral reforms ended in Guwahati on Sunday with the EC voting for the Brazilian model of conducting elections. The technology –Voter Verifiable Paper Trail (VVPT) – used by the South American country will be tried out in 200 polling stations across India soon.

VVPT, chief election commissioner SY Quraishi said, will supplement the existing electronic voting machine or EVM. “We have decided to try out the VVPT in polling stations experiencing extreme weather conditions such as Ladakh. The experiment will be done in presence of representatives of all political parties. If they approve, the system can be a reality,” he said.