To my editor’s dismay, here I am once again dangerously touching the dreaded electoral law. This is what happens to a pathetically rebellious imagination (at that age!) in the face of a law whose spirit is frankly stupid. In my defense, Mr. Editor, I have to say that in today’s text I explore an argument in defense of electronic voting. An argument that, for some very, very strange reason, the TSE does not mention.
“What do you mean in defense of electronic voting?!” , you ask, the question marks and exclamation marks disputing the leading role of indignation. In defense, huh. This is the grace of imagination: it allows us to abandon our gaze fixed in one direction to explore different angles and even quite unusual ones.
I stumbled upon the argument just now, walking around imagining electoral fraud in Brazil. Images of teenage gangsters powered by Gatorade and Red Bull soon came to mind, all locked in an underground room lit only by the glow of computer screens. In this delusion of mine, the villain commands some kind of super secret and hyper complex mega-scheme and…
The argument has already begun to be outlined. Because I don’t know of any major plot of this kind and size that has gone unnoticed. And it’s really impossible. This, by the way, is the secret of successful conspiracies: keeping them within reach of as few and loyal a group as possible. Already the conspiracies of failure, that is, the majority, are very elaborate webs with tens and even thousands of involved in an organization that is simply impractical . Impractical. Keep that word.
Do you keep it, take a deep breath and ask me if by chance I subjected this semi-argument to peer analysis, if I exposed it to the contradictory, if I sought synthesis? Of course! As I said, I was idle in my life, imagining any electoral fraud that could lead to a rebellious chronicle against the Electoral Justice, and I stumbled on it . I turned around, picked up the strange thing from the sidewalk (my thinking is civilized!), put it in my pocket and now I show it to you. I don’t know if it’s gold or pyrite. Maybe it’s even worse that I won’t mention it here because this is a family newspaper.
The alternative to a centralized plot would be a plot that just doesn’t fit with communism: a decentralized plot ( of course!), guerrilla warfare. Although guerrilla warfare matches communism. So better ignore the “doesn’t fit with communism”. But why was I even talking about it? Oh yes. I thought about the feasibility of a plot with independent microcells scattered throughout Brazil, without a single command or organized structure, but united by the same objective of defrauding the elections.
To believe in this would be to believe in the possibility of mobilization of such militancy. A militancy of hackers spread throughout Brazil, each one defrauding one or two polls a day. One not knowing that in the polling station next door there may be a comrade doing the same thing. There’s ideological commitment, huh? And how many militants acting on one side would it take for the fraud to have an effect? After all, the decision-making power of a single vote is statistically insignificant. And even to obtain a minimal advantage (51% to 49%) it would be necessary to rig thousands of polls in hundreds of different electoral zones.
I do not believe in such capacity for mobilization and organization. And much less in the ability to keep all this a secret. But maybe you or you (or you deep inside) believe it. And that’s why I’ve been saying for months that it didn’t cost anything for the Electoral Justice to add a layer of transparency to the electoral process. This arrogance, added to the authoritarian manner of the robes of greats, is what gives rise to mistrust. As irrational as it may be.
Now, what is really strange is the fact that this argument (which I will call here the Argument from the Impracticality of Electoral Frauds, or AIFE) has never been mentioned by the TSE. Instead, the court prefers to insist on the argument of infallibility or that distrust in the system is something for those who want to cause political instability.
Could it be that no one in the TSE thought of this? At AIFE, I mean? Or did they find the argument difficult to assimilate? Although the possibility now occurs to me that the omission of this argument was intentional. Of everything being part of a larger conspiracy that this mere provincial chronicler cannot see. A conspiracy that eliminates everyone who mentions AIFE.
Better change the direction of this prose.
