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Candidates arrested for electoral fraud during Brazil's local elections

Xinhua, October 3, 2016 Adjust font size:

Brazil's highest electoral court (TSE) announced on Sunday afternoon that 60 candidates had been caught committing electoral fraud that morning, as municipal elections got underway nationwide.

Brazil is voting Sunday for the mayors and town councils of all its 5,568 municipalities, with over 144 million voters expected to turn out.

According to the TSE, 39 candidates were arrested for carrying out exit polls as voters left the polling station, 11 for distributing propaganda, four for electoral corruption, two for the illegal transportation of voters and four for unspecified reasons.

A total of 815 illegal acts by voters were also detected, leading to 337 arrests. 1,675 booths also had to be replaced in the first hours of voting.

The main protagonists of Brazil's political crisis of recent months all had their say. President Michel Temer voted early at 8 a.m. local time in Sao Paulo. Temer had said he would vote at 11 a.m. local time but the daily O Globo suspected he did so earlier in order to avoid protesters.

A campaign on Facebook to block Temer's access to the polling station at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo had seen thousands of people pledge to protest.

Former President Dilma Rousseff voted in Porto Alegre, the capital of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, in a tense atmosphere. Prior to her arrival to vote at a college, around 30 of her supporters began protesting outside, wrote O Globo. A judge from the regional electoral court also ruled that journalists could not accompany Rousseff inside the polling station as she is "a common citizen".

A police presence also sought to stop Dilma's allies from entering to vote, including the Workers' Party (PT) mayoral candidate for Porto Alegre, Raul Pont. A scuffle ensued with a glass door being shattered before Rousseff and Pont were allowed to vote.

Finally, former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told the press that the PT would surprise people in this election and remained the favorite of the electorate, he was quoted as saying by O Globo.

Upon voting in Sao Bernardo de Campo, in the state of Sao Paulo, Lula acknowledged that the PT had undergone a political crisis but "continues to appear in all the polls as the favorite of the Brazilian electorate. The PT is (represented by) millions who live anonymously in the country ... I think the PT will surprise in these elections." Enditem