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I made no comment on the Brazil election, because I have no information about even how elections look like in Brazil.

I was just commenting on the statement that only fraudsters would be against electronic voting machines.

There was rampant fraud and miscounting during the counting of votes prior to the electronic machines in Brazil.

The people might have understood how their vote worked (they put a cross next to an executive candidate, and write the number or name of the candidates for the legislative) but that's nowhere near understanding how the whole system works.

The people who used to benefit from the paper ballots (the fraudsters) are the ones claiming for its return.

I suspect that's what that statement was about, given that this HN article is about the Brazilian elections.

Thank you for the information.

As a side question, if I may ask: In Germany every person is allowed to be an observer of the count and watch how votes are counted and tallied. Was this not possible in Brazil beforehand?

Or more to the point: What made it possible to defraud the count of votes?

Yes, it was possible to observe, and many people did. In fact, it drew a lot of interest and there were usually many observers per ballot... in big population centers.

But it is also incredibly hard to make sure every counted vote gets observed in a country of 150 million voters and where the polling location are as different as a boat in a minor river in the Amazon serving a semi-isolated tribe that barely speak the country's official language and a consulate in Ramallah. Ballots have to be transported, counted and recounted over a period of days.

If somewhere along the third day of counting someone exchanges 50 votes from a ballot and you saw it, what do you do? Your word against his? What if he threatens you with violence? Etc.

Electronic elections, even though they are a bit of a black box, solved all those very real, very practical problems.