Anonymous 'expert report' alleging fraud in Brazil's 2026 runoff misreads public election data

A document titled “Relatório Pericial Independente” (Independent Expert Report) has been circulating on social media with the claim that Brazil's 2026 presidential runoff was rigged. It carries no named author and says it is based on microdata from the Superior Electoral Court (TSE). According to Estadão Verifica, it was shared by supporters of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) and by US pro-Trump commentator Joey Mannarino, whose Instagram post drew more than 400,000 likes. The Electoral Justice rebutted it in a note on Tuesday, October 28, and two Brazilian fact-checkers, Aos Fatos and Estadão Verifica, concluded that it distorts public data.

What's being claimed

The report makes several allegations:

• Flávio Bolsonaro would have won if only ballots cast until 5 p.m. were counted.
• Votes cast after 5 p.m. favored a single candidate.
• The TSE's figure of about 34,000 post-5 p.m. votes is false.
• 8.6 million people voted without biometric identification, which it calls the “biggest material vulnerability” of the 2026 process.
• Microdata were only released 72 hours after the result was proclaimed.
• Unanimous results in some polling sections point to manipulation.

What the evidence shows

Late votes. The TSE analysis cited by Estadão Verifica counts 34,393 votes after 5 p.m.: 32,399 between 5 and 6 p.m., 1,981 between 6 and 7 p.m., and 13 after 7 p.m. Lula won with 64.2 million votes to Flávio Bolsonaro's 59.8 million, a gap of 4.4 million, more than a hundred times the number of late votes. Researchers at USP's Monitor do Debate Político no Meio Digital told Estadão that most late votes came before 5:10 p.m., consistent with people still in line. The law guarantees a vote to everyone waiting when polls close; in the 2022 runoff, 31,714 people voted after hours.

The report also cannot know whom late voters chose. The TSE says the Digital Vote Record “stores the choices without linking them to voters' identities.” Estadão Verifica adds that Estadão, BBC, g1 and Folha reached figures similar to the TSE's using the court's open microdata (we did not have access to those reports directly).

Biometrics. The TSE has not confirmed the 8.6 million figure, and it remains unverified. But biometric registration is not mandatory: 141.3 million of 158.7 million voters (89%) are registered, leaving roughly 17.4 million without it. When a fingerprint is not recognized, a backup protocol applies: the voter's birth year, which the poll worker cannot see, is typed into the terminal, the voter signs the roll, and the poll worker who released the vote is identified. The TSE also notes its files do not reveal how any voter released without biometrics voted.

Data timing. The 72-hour claim does not hold. Per the Electoral Justice, tallies were printed and posted on polling-station doors after closing and published online on the TSE Results page as they arrived; vote records and machine logs are also public.

Unanimous sections. Estadão Verifica's summary says the TSE described unanimous results in some sections as normal. The detailed reasoning was cut off in the text available to us.

How outlets covered it

All three sources are Brazilian and treat the report as disinformation. Aos Fatos headlined that the apocryphal report distorts TSE microdata; only its headline was available to us. Estadão Verifica went point by point, and the same piece also appears under Estadão's main brand. None of the provided sources defends the report or quotes its authors.

What we still don't know

Who wrote the report remains unknown. The real number of voters released without biometrics has not been confirmed by the TSE. We also lack the full Aos Fatos analysis and the TSE's detailed explanation on unanimous sections. None of the sources mentions any formal legal challenge to the result based on the document.