Confronting disinformation by the TSE in the 2022 elections: analysis of judgments from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2023

Abstract

The objective of this text is to analyze how the TSE combated disinformation in the judicial sphere during the 2022 Elections. Some basic questions that arise are: did the TSE make the concept of disinformation explicit in its judgments? Under what circumstances does the TSE understand that the practice of misinformation justifies the non-prevalence of freedom of speech? An analytical methodology was adopted for the main arguments used by the Superior Electoral Court in order to guide the actions of the various interested parties in the political-electoral process. The main conclusions are that, in addition to efforts to confront the issue in the administrative sphere, the TSE was intensely demanded from a judicial point of view, and that the Court repeatedly affirmed in its judgments the voter’s right to true, non-fraudulent, non-decontextualized information. In this sense, one of the great challenges has been to weigh up the minimum intervention of the Judiciary in the public debate and the health of the information environment, and thus define what is considered disinformative content for the Electoral Judiciary, setting it apart from the regular exercise of freedom of speech.