00:00This time that millions of Brazilians vote in a run-off election that will
00:04decide the country's future. The contest pits incumbent President Lula da Silva
00:09against right candidate, far-right candidate Flavio Bolsonaro. And now we
00:14go with Brian Muir, who is in Sao Paulo, with details about the situation in the
00:19South American largest country. Hello Brian, what's the atmosphere in Sao
00:23Paulo at this hour? Well things happening with the elections right now. Now all
00:31day long I've been saying that the vote count was going to probably finish by
00:34around 9 p.m. as it did in the first round. However, as the afternoon went on,
00:39more and more reports came out of different locations around Brazil where
00:43the right-wing local governments were doing things to impede poor people from
00:49making it to the polling stations, the polling centers. Here in Sao Paulo on the
00:53periphery of the city, they they shut down 40% of the buses. We talked to a
01:00woman here who just missed getting in the doors, who said it took her an hour and
01:0440 minutes to get here from where she was this morning. Now the PT publicly
01:10requested for the transportation minister of both Sao Paulo and the city of
01:16Salvador Bahia, which is Brazil's sixth largest city, to be arrested for
01:20deliberately blocking people from voting. As that was happening, other reports came
01:25out. In Pará, in Belém, they said the ferry boats stopped running to bring people
01:31from the countryside to the city to vote. In Petrolina, the largest city in the
01:36interior of the Northeast, there were similar complaints of buses not running. So,
01:41due to court orders, the buses were re-established for free in Salvador and Sao Paulo and other
01:48locations across the country. And as this was happening, after they'd shut the doors at this
01:53polling station here in Sao Paulo, I saw a security guard go out and reopen the doors and
01:58I saw new voters come in. After 5pm, he told me that they just received an order from the electoral
02:05court system to re-open the doors and to allow voting to continue until 7pm. About five minutes
02:13later, the director of this voting center came out and locked the door again, locked the gates into the
02:18voting center. And what they told me was that it's impossible to start to re-open a ballot box,
02:25an electronic voting box, if it's already been turned off. And that the order came from the superior electoral
02:32courts too late for them to keep voting going until 7pm. Since that happened, I've seen a couple other
02:39late voters arrive at the gates and ask what's going on and leave dejected because it seems like the
02:44information was spread nationwide that the vote would be extended until 7pm. I don't know because
02:51I've been standing here this whole time if it's just this voting center or if other voting centers
02:55around the country have shut their doors at 5pm and some have remained open until 7pm. We'll only
03:01find out in the next few minutes what's really happening. But if it's been proven that voters were
03:09blocked from making it to the polling stations and then they were unable to extend the deadline for voting,
03:15then this represents a major electoral crime. And I don't know how they're going to be able to deal with
03:20it,
03:20really frankly. Let me ask you something. With over 33 million people abstaining in the first round,
03:30how important it is to turn out for the outcome of today's runoff election? In the midst of everything
03:36that you have been explaining, such as transportation and everything that has happened today.
03:41Yeah, it's extremely important. And especially because if what the Workers' Party and other
03:49people are complaining about is actually true, if conservative efforts were made to block people
03:54from making it, poor people, from making it to the voting station, remembering that poor people
03:58voted for Lula at a 2 to 1 ratio against Bolsonaro in the first round, then people who,
04:04who, well, voter participation, an increase in voter participation will be fundamental for this election result.
04:12And from what I saw on the streets today, it looked like participation was higher than it was in the
04:20first round,
04:20at least in the voting centers that I visited. And I know several people who didn't vote in the first
04:25election
04:25who said they were going to vote this time around. So I guess we'll just find out if the increase
04:31in voter participation
04:32outweighs the number of votes that were lost because of transportation issues or not when the voting finishes tonight,
04:40when the vote counting finishes tonight.
04:42Thank you. Thank you, Ryan, very much. We're going to keep in contact with you in upcoming Emissions to Know
04:47More
04:48and also as the day evolves and everything comes to a wrap today. So thank you very much.
04:53We'll be right back to you in a few hours.
Comments