isitademocracy
At the end of the day, the bag of paper votes is transported with their oversight (multiple parties from opposing sides) to a public place where all of them will count the papers, together, in a public session, with cameras.
It's actually what already happens when the e-voting machines fail and your backup also fails. You cast votes with paper and the votes are counted with this exact same process, with oversight from all parties.
The other two are superior courts, but they don't rule constitutional matters.
The reasons were (you can confirm by clicking on the link above):
Security and Secrecy of the Vote: The court argued that the printed vote would not maintain the current standard of security provided by exclusively electronic voting. The paper trail could potentially pose a risk to the secrecy of the vote, with the possibility of identifying which voter chose which candidate. This could threaten the free choice of the voters.
[I find this argument ridiculous to be honest. The paper trail is anonymous and there's no way it violates the secrecy of the vote]
Operational Difficulties and Costs: The court also noted the significant difficulties and high costs associated with implementing a paper trail. They argued that the potential benefits associated with the security of the electoral process were minuscule compared to the detriments stemming from the implementation of the measure.
Rapid Implementation: The court deemed that the law, which called for the immediate implementation of the paper trail in 2018, failed to consider the necessary time and resources for proper setup.
[For a country the size of Brazil, the 1 billion BRL (200 million USD) is actually cheap if it avoids the political distrust that the current e-voting system has - see what happened in January 8th with the invasion of Congress and the Supreme Court].
If you are left-wing, this was actually a terrible day. If you disagree, you are not paying attention.
Brazil's Congress has passed laws determining that e-voting machines would have to print an anonymous proof of your vote, that is displayed to you behind a sealed acrylic viewport, so you can visually confirm it's casting your vote correctly, and then after you press CONFIRM one last time the paper is deposited in a sealead container attached to the voting machine for future inspection by all the political parties.
Like this, we would have the best of both worlds: fast vote counting on election day due to e-voting, but an anonymous paper record that could be audited in the following months by all political parties.
I used LAWS in plural for a reason; our CONGRESS has passed not one, but TWO laws imposing this measure:
1) Law 12034/2009
2) Law 13165/2015
If you don't believe me, just Google them.
What is amazing is that these two laws were deemed inconstitucional by our Supreme Court (?!). See [2].
So, in a democratic country with a functioning congress, the people's representatives have spoken at least twice that they wanted the paper trail attached to our e-voting machines, for auditing purposes.
Brazil's Congress is formed by 513 congressman + 81 senate members.
Regardless of that, our Supreme Court (11 seats) has deemed that these laws should not be put into place. Twice.
I find it also amazing that in 2009, the German Supreme Court decided the exact opposite of this: any e-voting system that doesn't have a non eletronic auditing system was deemed unconstitucional[1].
The rationale was simple: elections should be able to be audited by the "average joe", not only state employees or tech experts.
Bolsonaro was a fierce defender of the paper trail audit, which I also think we should have (we're all hackers here and I don't have to explain why I think that's a nice-to-have).
If you are still in doubt (you are not right? this is hackernews), just compare the sophistication of exploits you can find in https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/ with the amateur mistakes that were made in the development of these e-voting machines (for instance, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGmHrxvefNo).
So I think there's something very broken with a democracy in which the defense of a paper trail in e-voting machines is now considered an 'attack against democracy'.
It's one thing to say elections were stolen or that fraud happened; I'm not claiming that and, as a matter of fact, neither was Bolsonaro. But you can't claim I'm attacking democracy just because I stand for a paper trail for auditing the e-voting system.
[1] https://www.ndi.org/e-voting-guide/examples/constitutionalit...
[2] https://www.conjur.com.br/2020-set-16/supremo-confirma-limin...