Failure of election polls in the country

Failure of election polls in the country

1. Proconsult case;

2. Global organizations;

3.Ipec (formerly Ibope);

4. Data table;

5. Is falsifying search results a crime?

In November 1982, Brazil held its first direct election of governor, on the cusp of a military dictatorship. The bipartisanship between Arena – which supported the dictatorship – and MDB – the only authorized opposition, was abolished.

In Rio de Janeiro, the dispute would be fierce. And the state has decided: it will not use the public company Serpro (Federal Data Processing Service) to tally the votes that were then cast on paper ballots. The Regional Electoral Court of Rio de Janeiro suddenly preferred to hire the private company Proconsult, linked to members of the general regime. During the investigation, complaints of manipulation attempts were received. Under the tutelage of “delta differential”, a bogus system that manipulated numbers.

At the scene of the Machiavellian election crime was Rede Globo de Televisão, which prepared a series of proceedings to follow the investigation in Rio. And in partial results, he compiled data from the numbers of the Regional Electoral Court of Rio de Janeiro – TRE – contaminated at the source by a system called ‘delta differential’, having as its source the infamous Proconsult.

A powerful scheme at the time, when the country was still in its infancy in the electronic space, enabled an attempted election fraud in 1982. Leonel de Moura Brizola ran for governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, bringing to power the recently founded PDT, in 1980, and won for the 1982 elections, the first direct elections for the state government after the 1964 coup.

Brizola (PDT), Miro Teixeira (PMDB), Wellington Moreira Franco (PDS), Sandra Cavalcanti (PTB) and Lysâneas Maciel (PT)

Labor entered the dispute for the government of Rio, appearing at the bottom of the polls, facing in the campaign the favorite Miro Teixeira (PMDB), with the support of his godfather Chagas Freitas, owner of the newspaper O DIA, the candidate of the military regime of Wellington Moreira Franco (PDS), the successor Lacerdisma Sandra Cavalcanti (PTB) and Lysâneas Maciel (PT), founded in 1980, is contesting its first majority election.

In the 1982 elections, voting was done on paper ballots. The counting process envisaged that the votes would be counted at the polling stations themselves, and from there the partial results would follow in the ballots for tallying in the electoral zones – in the case of Rio, the company Proconsult was responsible for the general tallying, which promised agility and reliability of the results at a time when there were still those who called computers ‘electronic brains’.

In the southern zone of Rio de Janeiro, I coordinated the election inspection, and as the sheets were released and fixed on the walls of the polling station, a copy was highlighted and after checking and initialing, I sent it to the election monitoring center, where the votes were parallelized, checked and tallied . PDT inspectors did the same in all census areas.

History repeated itself, in the TSE count in the 2022 elections, when it reached 87% of the count.

Fraud would be implemented in practice in the final phase of vote counting, when, due to the so-called ‘delta differentials’, (what we now call chupa goat) programs installed on the computers of the company Proconsult, hired by the Electoral Service of the Regional Court of Rio, would take away a certain percentage of the votes given to Brizola, turning them into zero votes, or promote the transfer of blank voting rights to the account of the then ruling candidate and military coup plotter, Moreiro Franco.

The fraud in the count was discovered thanks to the work of the press, including the extensive coverage of the newspaper Tribuna da Imprensa, where he already worked as an editor. It was based on a verification scheme parallel to that of TRE-RJ established by Rádio Jornal do Brasil – whose coverage of those elections competed with and had a major advantage over the apparatus established by the country’s hegemonic media conglomerate, the unreliable Organizações Globo.

The electronic fraud was discovered by pedestrian César Maia, (then a candidate for federal representative) who identified the ‘delta differential’. where are the programs [dos computadores] they are organized in such a way that for a certain number of counted votes, the Brizola system automatically deducts a certain percentage.

‘delta differential’

History has repeated itself, now in the TSE count for the 2022 election, when it reached 87% of the count. nothing different despite the years.

Faced with the scandal and fraud that was exposed in public, the army retreated. The problem was also the redoing of calculations, and thus the parties would have to send bulletins (on carbon paper, filled in by hand) to be counted again. You could see deletions (0 becomes eight, one becomes seven), all to the detriment of those who were elected, from there the votes were taken and manipulated from candidates X to Z within, and of course the preferences of the party colonels.

The goal of the SNI was not only the election of the governor, but [a tentativa de garantir] influence on the electoral college that would gather for the elections [presidenciais] indirectly from 1985. That’s why they went through Pedro Simon, in Rio Grande do Sul, Marcos Freire, in Pernambuco, and Brizola, in Rio. The goal was to give the Electoral College to the PDS [o partido governista de então] and ensure the succession of General João Baptista Figueiredo.

In the midst of uncertainty, Brizola revealed at a meeting that he had been approached by one of the masterminds of the fraud, one of the system analysts who created the ‘delta differential’. This person sought out Brizola and offered a fraud card in exchange for the presidency of Companhia do Metrô or Banco do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. On the other hand, it provided a guarantee that fraud would not be committed. And Brizola pretended to agree. César Maia, who brought the informant, dominated the electronic program, put pressure on Proconsult, showed parallel maps to Rádio JB and stopped the operation. After taking office, Brizola appointed Cesaro Maia to the presidency of Banerje.

Why did the institutes Datafolha, Ipec, Ipespe and Quaest make a mistake?

The institute polls, Modal Mais and Paraná, were among the few that indicated scenarios more favorable to Bolsonaro, although with similar numbers, while Datafolha, Ipec (formerly Ibope), Ipespe and Quaest were lost in their assessments, revealing manipulation data. , always sympathetic to PT presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The numbers varied from Bolsonaro to Lula with figures ranging from 14% to 11%.

The latest results predicted by Datafolha and Ipec (formerly Ibope) on Saturday (October 1) were 50% to 36% and 48 to 31%, respectively. If it is not absurd, to discover that Lula would have won the first round with 51% of the valid votes.

A survey by the unknown Arko/Atlas published on Friday (30/9) pointed to former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) in the lead, with 50.7% of valid votes in the first round, followed by President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), with 41%. The first round of elections is scheduled for October 2. Polls published ahead of the first round underestimated the numbers Bolsonaro got; in São Paulo, where candidate Tarcísio de Freitas finished first, by a wide margin over Haddad, contradicting polls throughout the campaign.

Ipesp (formerly Ibope) was biased due to masking research

On the eve of election Saturday (January 10), before the first round, Lula had 50% of valid votes, while Bolsonaro appeared with 36%, according to a Datafolha survey. On the same day, a survey conducted by Globo/Ipec showed the PT with 51% (already elected) and the president with 37% (defeated). On the other hand, the Ipespe poll published on Saturday (January 10) gave Lula 49 percent and Bolsonaro 35 percent. Genial/Quaest from the same date indicated 49% and 38%, respectively. The first survey had a margin of error of three percentage points; the second, from two points. Nothing has been confirmed, not even the election of Lula.

Unforgivable mistakes in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo

Still in the southeast, Governor Cláudio Castro (PL) was re-elected in the first round of elections, with 58.66% of the vote; followed by Marcelo Freixo (PSB), with 28%. The figures take into account 99.96% of polls counted.

A Globo/Ipec poll for the government of Rio de Janeiro showed that Governor Castro is in the lead, with 47% of valid votes. Marcelo Freixo (PSB) had 28%. Again, the margin of error was two percentage points.

In São Paulo, with 100% of polling stations counted, Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans) received 42.32% of the vote; Fernando Haddad (PT), 35.70%. The current governor, Rodrigo Garcia (PSDB), remained with 18.4%.

A Datafolha poll for the government of São Paulo published last Saturday (1/10) showed Haddad leading with 39% of valid votes, followed by Tarcísio with 31% and Rodrigo Garcia with 23%. Despite the poll showing a difference of two percentage points, the reversal in favor of Tarcísi was one of the worst moments of the disastrous performance of the country’s research institutes.

Everything was wrong in Rio Grande Sul. the government and the senate

For the government of Rio Grande do Sul, the IPEC poll on the 30th showed that Onyx Lorenzoni had 30% of the valid votes, Eduardo Leite appeared with 40%. At the polls, Onyx won 37.50 percent and Milk 26.81 percent. The margin of error in both was 2 percentage points. As a result, the poll-to-poll difference was -13.19% for Onyx and 7.50%.

In the Senate race for Rio Grande do Sul, Vice President Hamilton Mourão received 44.11% of the vote this Sunday. Olívio Dutra, 37.85%. An IPEC poll on the 30th showed Mourão with 28% of valid votes and Dutra with 36% – the poll-to-poll difference was 16.11% for Mourão and -1.85% for Dutra.

The columnist contacted the institutes Datafolha, Ipec, Quaest, Ipespe, Paraná, MDA, Atlas and PoderData to comment on this topic. But they didn’t manifest, they didn’t even have a communications office to serve journalists.

In my opinion, in the light of the facts stated here and everything that Brazilian society has witnessed in the pre-campaign phase, it is necessary to introduce the CPI in Congress to determine if there was buying of the results of the polls published by the institutes that operated during the electoral process. And consequently punish those responsible.

ROBERTO MONTEIRO PINHO – journalist, editor, writer, environmentalist, executive director of investigative journalism and president of the National and International Journalist Association – ANI. He writes for national and international portals, websites and blogs. Author of the work: Justiça Trabalhista do Brasil (Edit. Topbooks) ecClosing the book “Enemies of the government“.