Court votes to bar Bolsonaro from running for office

BRASÍLIA — Brazil’s top elections court voted Friday to bar Jair Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years — a period that covers the next presidential election — for making what members of the panel said were claims he knew to be false about the integrity of the country’s voting systems.

As president, the “Trump of the Tropics” repeatedly asserted without evidence that the voting systems in Latin America’s largest country were vulnerable to fraud. With the vote of Judge Cármen Lúcia Friday afternoon, the seven-member Superior Electoral Court reached a majority to convict the right-wing populist of abuse of power for undermining faith in the country’s young democracy.

The ruling, if it survives a planned Supreme Court appeal, means Bolsonaro, 68, won’t be able to run for president until the 2030 election, when he’ll be 75. It’s the first time in the court’s 90-year history that it has applied the ban to a former president.