Podcast: Can we fix the rage machine?

As Election Day looms, voter intimidation tactics abound. On Monday, Trump offered $1 million for voter fraud tips that lead to an arrest and conviction. Last week, 92 undelivered ballots turned up in a Seattle dumpster; election officials voided every one, mailed replacements, and called it mail theft. In Alaska, Trump’s Justice Department already sued to block certification of the Senate race–but only if the Republican senator loses (Trump boasted that he’s the one who told them to do it). So the system is rigged, but only if Republicans lose. These are incoherent arguments about election integrity that reveal the desperation of people afraid to lose their grip on power. Luckily, the world keeps offering hopeful examples of what happens to those people.

In Brazil’s election on Sunday, democracy prevailed. After losing the 2022 election, Jair Bolsonaro pushed false claims that the election was rigged. Then, in a January 6th–like episode, his supporters stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace. Brazil’s electoral court banned Bolsonaro from office until 2030 for his attacks on the voting system, and its Supreme Court later sentenced him to 27 years for plotting a coup. Trump called him a “good man,” slapped a 50% tariff on the entire country in protest, and Bolsonaro’s son ran in his place, against President and Workers’ Party candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.