The PGE (Electoral Attorney General’s Office) defended the validity of the decision censored by the president of the (Superior Electoral Court), , and which pointed out the fall of the pre-candidate for the Presidency, , after the case “”.
In the demonstration, the body took a stance against judicial intervention in the case, which was requested by Flávio’s pre-campaign, and stated that the Justice criteria for the issue must be “strictly technical-legal based on the normative arrangement in place” and “cannot be guided by the possible consequences of the result of this research before the electorate”.
The piece is signed by the deputy electoral attorney general, Alexandre Espinosa Bravo Barbosa.
According to him, voters have values and opinions about the facts that impact the electoral dispute and should be able to express themselves about them through surveys. That way, there would be no point in interfering.
“In this context, it is not possible for the Electoral Court to take on the role of curator of the reliability of research results from a consequentialist perspective, as judicial intervention must be minimalist and sufficient to avoid objectively proven dysfunctionalities”, he said.
On June 9, the TSE postponed the analysis of the censorship requested by Flávio, amid public messages from ministers about the impacts the decision will have on this year’s elections.
After the president of the electoral court voted to maintain his request by the PL pre-candidate, minister Estela Aranha asked for a review of the case — more time for reflection, but with a deadline that is still undefined.
In the same session, other magistrates expressed concern about the issue and even considered setting rules for research institutes.
The Atlas/Bloomberg survey had been released on May 19. 5,032 people were interviewed using the Atlas RDR method, an acronym for random digital recruitment, from May 13th to 18th.
The survey showed that Flávio had dropped 6 points in the second round scenario against (PT) after the “Dark Horse” case — with the disclosure to the former banker.
In the request to suspend the publication of the survey, the team of the PL pre-candidate for the Presidency stated that the arrangement of questions and themes and the “use of associations” between Flávio and the owner of , , “contaminate and induce the answers of the interviewees”.
In a statement, AtlasIntel defended the scientific rigor of the research and said that the collection of voting intentions took place without the audio being played during the questionnaire. According to the company, the material was only presented to users at a later stage — without the possibility of returning to questions or changing answers already recorded.
In the session on June 9, Estela Aranha did not speak, but Kassio stated that she had anticipated to the presidency the intention of having more time for analysis.
The president of the TSE read his previously given decision, in which he stated that there was evidence of the use of the questionnaire as a mechanism to induct the interviewee.
“Although research institutes have technical autonomy to define the methodology used, in surveys that carry out this prerogative it does not remove jurisdictional control in cases where there is evidence of distortion of the research”, he said.
Kassio issued a preliminary decision and forwarded it to the other ministers for analysis. Until further deliberation, AtlasIntel is prohibited from disclosing, promoting or republishing the survey that showed a drop in Flávio’s voting intentions.
