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      How Bolsonaro Is Using the Military to Challenge Brazil’s Election

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      Despite little evidence of past fraud, President Jair Bolsonaro has long raised doubts about Brazil’s electoral process. Now the military is expressing similar concerns.RIO DE JANEIRO — President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has for months consistently trailed in the polls ahead of the country’s crucial presidential race. And for months, he has consistently questioned its voting systems, warning that if he loses October’s election, it will most likely be thanks to a stolen vote.Those claims were largely regarded as talk. But now, Mr. Bolsonaro has enlisted a new ally in his fight against the electoral process: the nation’s military.The leaders of Brazil’s armed forces have suddenly begun raising similar doubts about the integrity of the elections, despite little evidence of past fraud, ratcheting up already high tensions over the stability of Latin America’s largest democracy and rattling a nation that suffered under a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.Military leaders have identified for election officials what they say are a number of vulnerabilities in the voting systems. They were given a spot on a transparency committee that election officials created to ease fears that Mr. Bolsonaro had stirred up about the vote. And Mr. Bolsonaro, a former army captain who filled his cabinet with generals, has suggested that on Election Day, the military should conduct its own parallel count.Mr. Bolsonaro, who has spoken fondly about the dictatorship, has also sought to make clear that the military answers to him.Election officials “invited the armed forces to participate in the electoral process,” Mr. Bolsonaro said recently, referring to the transparency committee. “Did they forget that the supreme chief of the armed forces is named Jair Messias Bolsonaro?”Almir Garnier Santos, the commander of the Brazilian Navy, told reporters last month that he backed Mr. Bolsonaro’s view. “The president of the republic is my boss, he is my commander, he has the right to say whatever he wants,” Mr. Garnier Santos said.With just over four months until one of the most consequential votes in Latin America in years, a high-stakes clash is forming. On one side, the president, some military leaders and many right-wing voters argue that the election is open to fraud. On the other, politicians, judges, foreign diplomats and journalists are ringing the alarm that Mr. Bolsonaro is setting the stage for an attempted coup.Mr. Bolsonaro has added to the tension, saying that his concerns about the election’s integrity may lead him to dispute the outcome. “A new class of thieves has emerged who want to steal our freedom,” he said in a speech this month. “If necessary, we will go to war.”Activists held a banner that read, “Dictatorship never again,” in Portuguese, during a rally in March in Brasília to protest what organizers said was an increase in human rights violations under Mr. Bolsonaro. Eraldo Peres/Associated PressEdson Fachin, a Supreme Court judge and Brazil’s top election official, said in an interview that claims of an unsafe election were unfounded and dangerous. “These problems are artificially created by those who want to destroy the Brazilian democracy,” he said. “What is at stake in Brazil is not just an electronic voting machine. What is at stake is maintaining democracy.”Mr. Bolsonaro and the military say they are only trying to safeguard the vote. “For the love of God, no one is engaging in undemocratic acts,” Mr. Bolsonaro said recently. “A clean, transparent, safe election is a matter of national security. No one wants to have doubts when the election is over.”Brazil’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that “the Brazilian armed forces act in strict obedience to the law and the Constitution, and are directed to defend the homeland, guarantee the constitutional powers and, through any of these, of law and order.”Mr. Bolsonaro’s tactics appear to be adopted from former President Donald J. Trump’s playbook, and Mr. Trump and his allies have worked to support Mr. Bolsonaro’s fraud claims. The two men reflect a broader democratic backsliding unfolding across the world.The riot last year at the U.S. Capitol has shown that peaceful transfers of power are no longer guaranteed even in mature democracies. In Brazil, where democratic institutions are far younger, the military’s involvement in the election is heightening fears.Mr. Garnier Santos told the Brazilian newspaper O Povo that “as a navy commander, I want Brazilians to be sure that their vote will count,” adding, “The more auditing, the better for Brazil.”A Brazilian federal police report detailed how two generals in Mr. Bolsonaro’s cabinet, including his national security adviser, had tried for years to help him uncover evidence of election fraud.And on Friday, Brazil’s defense minister, Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, sent a 21-point missive to election officials, criticizing them as not taking the military’s points about election safety seriously. “The armed forces don’t feel properly acknowledged,” he said.So far, Mr. Bolsonaro’s comments have gone further. In April, he repeated a falsehood that officials count votes in a “secret room.” He then suggested that voting data should be fed to a room “where the armed forces also have a computer to count the votes.” The military has not publicly commented on this idea.Since the military’s support could be critical for a coup, a popular question in political circles has become: If Mr. Bolsonaro disputed the election, how would the 340,000 members of the armed forces react?Mr. Bolsonaro and President Donald J. Trump in 2020 at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. The men are close allies who have both questioned their country’s elections.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times“In the U.S., the military and the police respected the law, they defended the Constitution,” said Mauricio Santoro, a professor of international relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, referring to Mr. Trump’s claims of a stolen election. “I’m not sure the same thing will happen here.”Military officials and many politicians dispute any notion that the military would back a coup. “He would fall. He wouldn’t have any support,” said Maynard Santa Rosa, a Brazilian Army general for 49 years who served in Mr. Bolsonaro’s cabinet. “And I think he knows it.”Sérgio Etchegoyen, a retired army general close to the military’s current leaders, called concerns about a coup alarmist. “We might think it’s bad that the president questions the ballots,” he said. “But it’s much worse if every five minutes we think the democracy is at risk.”Some American officials are more concerned about the roughly half-million police officers across Brazil because they are generally less professional and more supportive of Mr. Bolsonaro than the military, according to a State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.Any claim of a stolen election could face a skeptical public unless the race tightens. A survey of 2,556 Brazilians in late May showed that 48 percent supported former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, compared with 27 percent for Mr. Bolsonaro. (If no candidate captures half of the vote, the top two finishers will go to a runoff on Oct. 30.)That same poll showed that 24 percent of respondents did not trust Brazil’s voting machines, up from 17 percent in March. Fifty-five percent of respondents said they believed the election was vulnerable to fraud, including 81 percent of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters.In the 37 years of Brazil’s modern democracy, no president has been as close to the military as Mr. Bolsonaro, a former army paratrooper.As a congressman, he hung portraits of the leaders of the military dictatorship in his office. As president, he has tripled the number of military personnel in civilian posts in the federal government to nearly 1,100. His vice president is also a former general.Last year, as he intensified his critiques of the electoral system, he dismissed the defense minister and the top three military commanders, installing loyalists in their places.The new defense minister quickly weighed in on the electoral process, backing Mr. Bolsonaro’s push to use printed ballots in addition to voting machines, which would make recounts easier. Brazil is one of the few countries to rely entirely on electronic voting machines — 577,125 of them.While Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies admit that they lack proof of past fraud, they point to a number of problems: some perceived irregularities in voting returns; a 2018 hack of the electoral court’s computers, which do not connect to the voting machines; and election officials’ general dismissal of concerns.An electronic voting machine at the headquarters of Brazil’s electoral court last month as analysts tested the system.Eraldo Peres/Associated PressDiego Aranha, a Brazilian computer scientist who has tried to hack the machines for research, said that the lack of paper backups makes it harder to verify results, but that the system overall was safe.Brazil’s Supreme Court ultimately rejected the use of printed ballots, citing privacy concerns.Last year, when election officials created the “election transparency commission,” they invited an admiral with a computer science degree to join. Brazil’s defense minister instead sent a general who directs the army cybercommand.The army representative sent four letters to election officials with detailed questions about the voting process, as well as some recommended changes.He asked about the machines’ tamper-proof seals, the computer code that underpins them and the biometric technology used to verify voters. Election officials said on Saturday that they would accept some of the small technical recommendations and study others for the next election but that other suggestions misunderstood the system.Amid the back-and-forth, the former head of the electoral court, Luís Roberto Barroso, told reporters that military leaders were “being guided to attack the Brazilian electoral process,” an assertion that Mr. Nogueira, the defense minister, called “irresponsible.” The electoral court also invited European officials to observe the election, but rescinded the invitation after the Bolsonaro administration objected. Instead, Mr. Bolsonaro’s political party is trying to have an outside company audit the voting systems before the election.Mr. Bolsonaro and Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, the defense minister and the commander of the Brazilian Army, at a ceremony last August in Brasília.Andressa Anholete/Getty ImagesMr. Fachin, who now runs the electoral court, said Mr. Bolsonaro was welcome to conduct his own review but added that officials already test the machines. “This is more or less like picking the lock on an open door,” he said.The Biden administration has warned Mr. Bolsonaro to respect the democratic process. On Thursday, at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, President Biden met with Mr. Bolsonaro for the first time. Sitting next to Mr. Biden, Mr. Bolsonaro said he would eventually leave office in “a democratic way,” adding that October’s election must be “clean, reliable and auditable.”Scott Hamilton, the United States’ top diplomat in Rio de Janeiro until last year, wrote in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo that Mr. Bolsonaro’s “intent is clear and dangerous: undermine the public’s faith and set the stage for refusing to accept the results.”Mr. Bolsonaro insists that he is simply trying to ensure an accurate vote.“How do I want a coup if I’m already president?” he asked last month. “In Banana Republics, we see leaders conspiring to stay in power, co-opting parts of the government to defraud elections. Here it’s exactly the opposite.”André Spigariol More

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      What to Know About France’s Parliamentary Elections

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      President Emmanuel Macron is looking to secure a strong majority to help him pass bills during his second term, but a reinvigorated alliance of left-wing parties hopes to thwart him.PARIS — Weeks after re-electing President Emmanuel Macron, voters in France return to the polls on Sunday to choose their parliamentary representatives, elections that will determine whether Mr. Macron’s bills sail or stumble through the legislature during his second term.All 577 seats are up for grabs in the National Assembly, France’s lower and more powerful house of Parliament, which Mr. Macron’s party and its allies currently control. Most polls predict that will remain the case — to a degree.France’s modern presidential and parliamentary elections are held only months apart, on the same five-year cycle. Over the past two decades, voters have always given their newly elected president strong parliamentary backing, and polls and experts suggest that would be a likely outcome for Mr. Macron this time, too.His biggest challenge comes from a reinvigorated alliance of France’s left-wing forces, which have taken the rare step of setting aside personal squabbles and ideological differences to mount a united front. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, the dominating force in that alliance, is hoping it can eke out a narrow victory and compel Mr. Macron to appoint him prime minister.But so far, according to recent surveys, voters have been more concerned by surging inflation than by the campaign, and pollsters say they expect record-low turnout.Here is a primer on the elections, which will be held in two rounds, on Sunday and on June 19.President Emmanuel Macron’s party and its allies currently control the National Assembly, and most polls predict that will remain the case — to a degree.Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat is at stake?Presidents hold France’s most powerful political office, with broad abilities to govern by decree. But they need Parliament, and especially the National Assembly, to accomplish most of their bigger domestic policy goals, push through spending bills or change the Constitution.Emmanuel Macron’s Second Term as President of FranceWith the reelection of Emmanuel Macron, French voters favored his promise of stability  over the temptation of an extremist lurch.Cabinet: President Macron’s new government combines continuity with change, as newcomers at the foreign and education ministries join first-term veterans.New Prime Minister: Élisabeth Borne, the minister of labor who previously was in charge of the environment, will be the second woman to hold the post in France.Overcoming Tragedy: Ms. Borne’s father, a World War II resistance member and a Holocaust survivor, killed himself when she was 11, an experience she has rarely discussed in public.Rape Allegations: Two women have accused Damien Abad, the newly appointed minister for solidarity and for disabled people, of raping them. Mr. Abad has denied the allegations.Some of Mr. Macron’s prominent campaign promises, like his vow to raise the legal age of retirement, require legislation. His new government also wants to tackle the effects of inflation, requiring lawmakers to vote on measures like food subsidies.The main players in the elections are:Ensemble, a centrist coalition that includes La République en Marche, the party that Mr. Macron founded and that swept to victory in 2017 with a wave of political newcomers as candidates.La Nouvelle Union Populaire Écologique et Sociale, more commonly known by its acronym NUPES, a left-wing alliance brought together by Mr. Mélenchon’s France Unbowed party that includes the Socialist, Green and Communist parties.A group of traditional right-wing parties, led by Les Républicains, the mainstream conservatives.The far-right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen, who was defeated by Mr. Macron in the presidential runoff in April.The latest polls suggest that Ensemble and NUPES are neck-and-neck, with about 25 to 28 percent each. The National Rally is predicted to receive around 20 to 21 percent of the vote, with Les Républicains roughly 10 to 11 percent. Smaller groups, including the party of Éric Zemmour, a far-right pundit who ran for president, are polling in the single digits.If Mr. Macron’s party alone musters an absolute majority of seats — 289 — he will have relatively free rein to enact his legislative agenda. A repeat of the current situation, in which his party and its allies hold an absolute majority, would make him dependent on the coalition to pass some legislation. But if his party and its allies lose too much ground, they could be forced to reach out to lawmakers from opposing parties on certain bills. And if NUPES is able to secure control of Parliament, it would force Mr. Macron to appoint a new prime minister and a new cabinet, potentially blocking much of his agenda.A polling station in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, in April during the second round of the country’s presidential election.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesHow do the elections work?France’s 577 electoral districts cover the mainland, overseas departments and territories, as well as French citizens living abroad. Each district has one seat. More than 6,200 candidates are running for office nationwide.Any number of candidates can compete in the first round in each district, but there are specific thresholds to reach the second round. While in most cases the runoff will feature the top two vote-getters, it can sometimes feature three or even four of them. Whoever wins the most votes in that runoff wins the race. (Under some conditions, a candidate who gets more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round wins outright.)The two-round system usually produces stable majorities that French governments can rely on, but it comes at a cost. The makeup of the National Assembly does not always accurately reflect the country’s broader political landscape and usually skews in favor of bigger parties. Smaller ones complain that their voters do not get the representation they deserve, fueling disaffection with the political system.French presidential candidates, including Mr. Macron, have repeatedly floated the idea of fixing that discrepancy by introducing a dose of proportional representation for parliamentary elections. But a bill on that issue never came to fruition during Mr. Macron’s first term, and it is unclear whether he will pursue the idea during his second.Jean-Luc Mélenchon speaking on Friday at a gathering in Marseille, in southern France, to support candidates from NUPES, a left-wing coalition.Daniel Cole/Associated PressWhat does the National Assembly do?The National Assembly and the Senate — currently controlled by the right — are France’s two houses of Parliament. Both are based in Paris and play important roles in drafting bills and voting laws. But only the National Assembly is elected directly by the people, and it has more leeway to legislate and challenge the executive.The National Assembly usually has the final word if the two houses disagree on a bill, and it is the only house that can topple a French cabinet with a no-confidence vote. It has some prerogatives on key legislation like spending or social security bills.Lawmakers can question cabinet members; they can also establish investigative commissions and hold hearings, although their powers and the scope of their investigations are more limited than congressional inquiries in the United States.Unless the president dissolves the National Assembly and calls for new elections — a move that is rarely attempted — lawmakers are in office for five years.Inside the National Assembly in Paris. The body’s lawmakers are elected to serve for five years.Stephane De Sakutin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat comes next?The last voting stations close at 8 p.m. on Election Day, which is when the French news media will work with pollsters to publish the first projected results based on preliminary counts. Races will be called district by district as the evening progresses.Those first results will give a sense of each party’s standing and of the direction each race might take, but the National Assembly’s final composition will become clear only after the runoffs.Several ministers are running in the elections, including Élisabeth Borne, the prime minister. Their races will be closely watched, as a loss by one or several of them would be seen as a rebuke of Mr. Macron, who has warned that those who are not elected will leave his cabinet. More

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      Newly United, French Left Hopes to Counter President in Upcoming Vote

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      Left-wing parties have joined forces ahead of France’s two-stage parliamentary elections, hoping to revive their fortunes and put a break on President Emmanuel Macron’s agenda.ALLEX, France — With its centuries-old stone villages nestled among lavender fields, cows and goats grazing in the mountains and miles of vineyards, the Drôme region resembles a France in miniature.Steeped in tradition and seemingly averse to change, the vast southeastern district, tucked between Lyon and Marseille, has for the past two decades been the political domain of France’s center-right. But with the first round of France’s two-step parliamentary elections approaching on Sunday, the long-excluded left sees a rare opening to challenge President Emmanuel Macron, after his convincing re-election victory in April over Marine Le Pen, his far-right challenger.Largely nonexistent in the presidential campaign, France’s fractious leftist parties have forged an alliance with the aim of making themselves relevant again, blocking Mr. Macron from getting a majority in Parliament and complicating his new five-year term.At least that is the hope of politicians like Marie Pochon, the local left-wing candidate in the third constituency of the Drôme, where left-wing parties outscored Mr. Macron’s in the presidential vote by more than 10 percentage points.Marie Pochon, left, a candidate representing the leftist coalition NUPES, campaigning door to door in Allex, France, a town in the Drôme.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesDuring a recent stop in Allex, a small village of cream-colored stone houses in the eastern part of the Drôme, Ms. Pochon was met with an enthusiasm that had long eluded the left in this part of France.“Keep going, we’re all behind you!” Maud Dugrand, a resident of Allex, told Ms. Pochon as she rang doorbells on a narrow street and handed out leaflets, which one resident, reading a newspaper on his terrace, refused, saying he was already convinced by her.“Our constituency is a laboratory,” said Pascale Rochas, a local Socialist candidate in the 2017 legislative elections who has now rallied behind Ms. Pochon’s candidacy. “If we can win here, we can win elsewhere.”The Drôme, indeed, is a snapshot of small-town France, giving the local election the veneer of a national contest. Until recently, the region was typical of the disarray of the left at the national level, with each party refusing to collaborate and instead clinging to its strongholds.Emmanuel Macron’s Second Term as President of FranceWith the reelection of Emmanuel Macron, French voters favored his promise of stability  over the temptation of an extremist lurch.Cabinet: President Macron’s new government combines continuity with change, as newcomers at the foreign and education ministries join first-term veterans.New Prime Minister: Élisabeth Borne, the minister of labor who previously was in charge of the environment, will be the second woman to hold the post in France.Overcoming Tragedy: Ms. Borne’s father, a World War II resistance member and a Holocaust survivor, killed himself when she was 11, an experience she has rarely discussed in public.Rape Allegations: Two women have accused Damien Abad, the newly appointed minister for solidarity and for disabled people, of raping them. Mr. Abad has denied the allegations.The Socialists and Communists have long dominated the southern Provençal villages, while the Greens and the hard left have battled for the more economically threatened farmlands in the north.Residents discussing the upcoming legislative elections in a market in Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, in the Drôme, on Tuesday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesBut the new leftist alliance — forged under the leadership of the longtime leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon — is now trying to bridge those gaps, uniting Mr. Mélenchon’s own France Unbowed Party with the Socialists, Communists and Greens.Mr. Mélenchon, who came third in April’s presidential race, has portrayed the parliamentary election as a “third round” presidential vote. He has called on voters to metaphorically “elect” him prime minister (the position is appointed by the president) by giving the coalition a majority in the National Assembly, the lower and most powerful house of Parliament.The alliance has allowed the left to avoid competing candidacies and instead field a single candidate in almost all of France’s 577 constituencies, automatically raising its chances of winning seats in Parliament.Stewart Chau, a political analyst for the polling firm Viavoice, said the alliance was “the only dynamic in the current political landscape.”Since her loss in the presidential election, Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally party has failed to drive the public debate around its favorite themes of economic insecurity, immigration and crime, and the two-round voting system, which generally favors more moderate candidates, will most likely result in the far right securing only a few dozen seats in Parliament.Posters featuring Ms. Pochon, in the commune of Saoû.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMr. Chau said Mr. Mélenchon had created a new “center of gravity” for the French left and had “succeeded in pushing through the idea that the game was not up yet,” despite Mr. Macron’s re-election.Opinion polls currently give the leftist coalition — called Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale, more commonly known by its acronym NUPES — a chance of winning 160 to 230 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly.That could be enough to put a break on Mr. Macron’s political agenda in Parliament and upset his second term as president, though it is far from certain.Ms. Pochon, 32, an environmental activist, perhaps best embodies the outreach of the left-wing alliance even in areas that the center-right has long controlled.Economic and social issues vary greatly along the roads that run through the Drôme’s third constituency. Each of its 238 municipalities, populated by only a few thousand people, face specific challenges.Voters mingling after Ms. Pochon’s rally on Tuesday before the first round of voting on Sunday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesEconomic insecurity, a shortage of doctors and a lack of public transportation are the main concerns in the district’s northern farmlands, whereas Provençal villages in the south are more worried about lavender production, a key feature of the local economy increasingly threatened by rising temperatures.To address the variety of issues, Ms. Pochon has drawn on the alliance’s extensive platform, which includes raising the monthly minimum wage to 1,500 euros, or about $1,600; kick-starting ecological transition with big investments in green energy; reintroducing small train lines; and putting an end to medical deserts.“We’re witnessing the emergence of a rural environmentalism, of a new kind of left in these territories,” Ms. Pochon said during an interview.It has also helped that local left-wing forces have teamed up in the election, putting an end to divisions that Ms. Rochas said had been a “heartbreak.”Celia de Lavergne, right, a candidate in Mr. Macron’s center-right party, canvassing for votes at a market.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesIn the Drôme, Macron supporters acknowledged the challenge they face. “NUPES worry us a bit because they’re very present on the ground,” said Maurice Mérabet, as he was handing out leaflets at an open-air market for Célia de Lavergne, the constituency’s current lawmaker and a member of Mr. Macron’s party, La République En Marche.Ms. de Lavergne, who is running for re-election and was campaigning in Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, a small town in southern Drôme, said it would “be a close race” between her and Ms. Pochon.She attacked the leftist alliance for its economic platform, saying it was unrealistic and slammed the coalition’s plans to phase out reliance on nuclear power.Instead she highlighted how she has fought to try to get an additional reactor for the local nuclear plant, as part of Mr. Macron’s ambitious plans to construct 14 new-generation reactors.“Being antinuclear is a total aberration,” said Jean-Paul Sagnard, 72, a retiree, as he wove his way through the market’s vegetable stalls. He added that Mr. Macron’s platform was “the one that makes the most sense economically speaking.”Nuclear power and climate change are key issues for voters in the Drôme.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesCriticism about Mr. Mélenchon’s fiery personality is also frequent, even among left-wing supporters.Maurice Feschet, a lavender producer, said that even though he would vote for the leftist alliance on Sunday, Mr. Mélenchon’s calls to elect him prime minister had left him indifferent.“I don’t think that he has what it takes to lead the country,” said Mr. Feschet, standing in the middle of a lavender field.In the narrow streets of the village of Allex, Ms. Dugrand, the supporter of Ms. Pochon, also told the candidate that Mr. Mélenchon “is not my cup of tea.” But she could not hide her excitement at the prospect of the left becoming the main force of opposition to Mr. Macron, after five years during which it was virtually voiceless.“We only have one wish, that something happens,” she said.Campaign posters in Allex, a village in the Drôme, speak to the region’s importance in the upcoming election.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times More