Brazil runoff live updates: ballot count resumes after two-hour voting extension

Far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro said it was “impossible to concede the election result” and that his legal team would seek to have the election annulled.

Following in the footsteps of his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro , who four years ago also refused to acknowledge his defeat by Lula – before attempting a coup and being convicted for it – the senator cited a supreme court justice’s decision to extend voting hours as the alleged reason.

Although Bolsonaro had also requested an extension of voting hours, the senator said Justice Cristiano Zanin ’s decision to extend it from 5pm to 7pm “was not normal, it was unacceptable” and amounted to “changing the rules of the game while the game was being played”.

Bolsonaro said the decision had come from “Lula’s friends on the supreme court”, pointing out that Zanin had previously represented the leftwing president as his lawyer and had been appointed to the court by him.

The justice ordered the extension minutes after 5pm, the scheduled closing time for polling stations, after fellow justice Kassio Nunes Marques spent hours without ruling on Lula’s campaign request. During the campaign, Marques, appointed by Jair Bolsonaro and current head of the electoral court, had been criticised for bias in rulings favouring the far-right senator.