Lula won Brazil's presidential runoff on October 25 with 51.79% of valid votes, a margin voz.us put at more than 4 million ballots over conservative Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. The margin looks decisive. The process that produced it does not.

At 5:03 p.m. Brasília time, according to Valor Internacional, three minutes after polls were scheduled to close, Supreme Federal Court (STF) Justice Cristiano Zanin ordered polling stations that had not yet shut to remain open for two additional hours. The order came in response to a request filed by Lula's campaign at 3:46 p.m., citing transport shortages in Bahia and other northeastern states, the region that forms the core of Lula's electoral base. The case did not reach Zanin as rapporteur until 4:33 p.m., leaving less than 30 minutes for review before the deadline passed.

Court records show Zanin served as Lula's personal defence attorney throughout the Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash) corruption trial, in which Lula was convicted. Breitbart reported that Lula was sentenced in 2019 to roughly 20 years in prison for misusing public funds during his first two presidential terms. The STF later overturned that conviction on procedural grounds, presenting no new evidence of innocence. Lula ran for president again in 2022, won, and in June 2023 nominated Zanin to the STF. He took his seat two months later.

The Superior Electoral Tribunal's (TSE) president, Kassio Nunes Marques, confirmed the order was without precedent. "It wasn't a conventional decision. Everything was unusual," he told reporters, as quoted by Breitbart. He stated there was no rule authorising a voting extension and that nothing like it had occurred in the institution's history. By the time Zanin's order reached election officials, thousands of electronic voting machines had already closed. Their programming prevented them from being restarted, forcing the TSE to pause vote-counting and block the transmission of tally reports nationwide.

Senator Flávio Bolsonaro refused to concede and announced plans to seek annulment of the result, describing the extension as a mid-process rule change and an improper intervention by a justice of the Federal Supreme Court. His campaign coordinator, Senator Rogério Marinho, wrote on social media: "The degree of interference by some STF justices is astonishing." Eduardo Bolsonaro, the candidate's brother, told a live-stream audience, as reported by LBC: "It's hard to imagine what the legal basis for this could possibly be. It doesn't inspire credibility." Vera Chemim, a constitutional lawyer in São Paulo, told Reuters there was a possibility the losing side might contest the outcome, arguing that many people were unable to vote even with the extended deadline.

The transportation disruption that prompted the extension request had its own disputed history. A court in Bahia ordered the arrest of Salvador's municipal mobility secretary, Pablo Souza, after investigators found, according to Valor Internacional, that the city's bus fleet had been cut by approximately 42% on election day. Souza was in Paris on an official assignment and was not arrested. The Federal Police opened investigations into transport failures in Sergipe and examined four other cases across São Paulo, Alagoas, Piauí, and Bahia.

Zanin's ruling was the first time since electronic voting machines were introduced in Brazil that a court order extended polling hours, Valor Internacional reported. It was also, Breitbart noted, the first time in roughly four decades that a candidate who lost the first round of voting won the runoff. Lula's fourth term begins January 5, 2027. During those four years, Jovem Pan reported via Breitbart, he could appoint up to four new STF justices, including one vacancy that has existed since October 2025 and three seats whose holders are approaching the mandatory retirement age of 75.

The man who cleared Lula's legal path to the presidency now holds a seat on the court that may decide whether his election stands.