Kassio Nunes Marques, president of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), suspended an order issued the previous night that had rejected Deltan Dallagnol’s Senate candidacy in Paraná and directed that votes cast for him be treated as null.

The immediate effect was practical as much as legal: Dallagnol’s name was already on electronic voting machines when the earlier ruling arrived. Nunes Marques wrote that there was no longer time to tell Paraná voters that ballots cast for a candidate appearing on the machine would be disregarded.¹ Dallagnol therefore returned to the race with the status of deferido com recurso — approved pending appeal — allowing votes for him to be received during polling.

Accounts from the right stressed the procedural objection to the original decision. One report said Nunes Marques considered a single-justice ruling issued hours before the election unreasonable, arguing that deciding alone is exceptional and that the court’s ordinary form of action is through its full bench.² Dallagnol’s allies cast the reversal as a safeguard for voter choice; Dallagnol himself called the episode “the greatest electoral violence in Brazil’s history.”³

The reporting also underscores the limits of the reprieve. Nunes Marques did not rule that Dallagnol is eligible, and the TSE’s plenary will still decide whether his registration and votes stand. The dispute stems from his 2021 resignation from the federal prosecution service while he faced proceedings that could have led to disciplinary action. In 2023, the TSE annulled his federal deputy mandate under its interpretation of Brazil’s Clean Record law.

Thus, the competing accounts differ over the fairness and timing of the initial ruling, but converge on the central fact: election-day voting could proceed normally, while the court’s collective judgment remains decisive.