“Impresso e auditável”: doxa e desconfiança no processo eleitoral

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the discourse of mistrust in the electoral process, radiated by the Presidency of the Republic, between the years 2019 - 2021 and evaluate, using some theories of contemporary Sociology and Political Science, the symbolic dispute for the conquest of public opinion, by the regency of doxa, in a discursive clash with the Electoral Justice. The aim was to analyze how the discourse of suspicion in the electoral process affects the quality of our democracy. We propose an analysis that privileges the interlocution of this discourse of distrust with the Electoral Court, due to its particularity in relation to the other organs of the Judiciary, as well as being an institution whose area of activity is linked to the citizen's perception of democracy itself. The methodological choice of discourse analysis was due to the need to understand how words (and their symbolic efficacy) about mistrust in the electoral process are a matter of constructing social reality. In other words: how doxa, structured and structuring discourse, disseminated, recognized, authorized and unnoticed, helps to shape the perception of electoral integrity. We have organized the analyses along four axes: (i) how the relationship between the candidate and the discourse of suspicion came about; (ii) what were the strategies for containing and masking this discourse during the candidate's rise to political prominence; (iii) how, starting with the presidency of the Republic, what was mistrust became even more serious and was transformed into statements of certainty about electoral fraud, affecting the perception of the image of the Electoral Justice system, and (iv) we analyzed under a microscope what became known as the "bombshell" live broadcast, because it was a broadcast in which an expectation of revelation was created in the staging of the political drama, as well as being an event that sums up the entire discourse of mistrust that we analyzed during the course of this research. We therefore conclude that promoting doubt about the fairness of elections and their managing institutions can be something very different from the search for technical improvement in electoral processes. When political leaders, without containment strategies on the part of their parties and other institutions, repeatedly promote distrust in the process, this affects the public's perception of electoral integrity, with repercussions for the quality of democracy experienced.