Electoral Court tests authenticity of 10 ballot boxes in SP before voting begins; understand how it works

One of the audits took place in section 206 of the Escola Municipal de Ensino Fundamental (EMEF) Professor Oscar Pennacino, in Osasco, Greater São Paulo, with the presence of electoral authorities, representatives of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) and members of the vote receiving board.

The test was carried out before the so-called zerésima was issued, a report that proves that there were no votes registered in the ballot box before voting began.

Judge Rubens Pedreiro Lopes, from the 315th Electoral Zone of Osasco, stated that the audit is yet another way to guarantee the transparency of the electoral process.

"It is another step and another demonstration that the democratic process in elections is being observed and verified so that voters can start voting, the process of choosing their candidate in the purest transparency and fairness, as required by the Constitution and the laws of our country", he stated.

During the procedure, inspectors check the ballot box's identification, examine the seals and check the digital signatures of the files installed in the equipment.

The checking is done through digital summaries, known as hashes, which allow comparing the files present in the ballot boxes with those officially sealed by the TSE before the election.

In addition to authenticity audits, the Electoral Court is carrying out integrity tests this Sunday on another 33 electronic voting machines, at the Centro Cultural São Paulo and Universidade Paulista (Unip), in Paraíso, in the capital.

Unlike the authenticity test, which checks the programs installed on the equipment, the integrity test seeks to demonstrate that the ballot box correctly records the votes typed.

In the audit, votes previously recorded on paper ballots are entered into electronic voting machines. At the end, the results are compared to check whether the totals made by the equipment correspond to the votes recorded on paper.