Election vote in Brazil was rigged again

It appears that the damage that began a few years ago in Brazil, leading to far-left politician Lula da Silva becoming the "president", has now occurred again, as rigging appears to have taken place in his favor, and all to prevent Flavio Bolsonaro from ascending the position:

Socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 80, was elected president of Brazil for a fourth term in Sunday’s runoff election, narrowly defeating conservative Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro in a tightly contested race in which both sides alleged irregularities and the Supreme Court intervened to extend voting. [...]

The election on Sunday was affected — marred, critics alleged — by a decision by the country’s top court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), to allow for the extension of voting times after Lula’s campaign reportedly complained of a bus shortage for transport. The cities in which the Lula campaign reportedly complained that transport issues had prevented voters from reaching the polls — Salvador, Lauro de Freitas, and Feira de Santana — are all in Bahía, part of the northeast, which has long been a PT stronghold.

STF Justice Cristiano Zanin issued an unprecedented, single-justice ruling late in the voting time to extend voting by two hours, closing polls at 7 p.m. local time, rather than 5 p.m. as previously anticipated. The ruling was notably a success for Lula after he attempted a similar move in 2022, when he ran against Sen. Bolsonaro’s father, then-President Jair Bolsonaro, but another STF justice, Alexandre de Moraes, rejected the move.

Zanin’s decision was controversial not just because of its unprecedented nature and the fact that no other STF justice participated in the ruling, but because he ruled that only polling stations that had not closed at the previously agreed-upon time could remain open. Once polling stations are closed, to preserve integrity, poll workers cannot easily reopen that process, so those that refused to close at the appropriate time — presumably, those advocated for by the Lula campaign — obtained an extra two hours to collect votes.

Bolsonaro's said he'll challenge this in court. But this still makes clear Brazil's fallen victim to some of the worst communism in Latin America, or anywhere. And it doesn't bode well for the state of the world.