Washington: U.S. President Donald Trump, who criticized and posted that the American election process is corrupt, caused confusion with a social media post in which he said that it was great that votes in the Indian presidential election were counted immediately and the results announced.
This is because there is no presidential election in India, and no election is currently taking place there. At the same time, it is in Brazil that a presidential election has just been held. It appears that he mistakenly wrote India instead of Brazil.
Earlier, in a post Trump made on Sunday on the Truth Social social media platform, he said, “In India’s presidential election, 125 million people voted; the results were announced shortly after voting ended. But in the United States, it takes several weeks to announce election results. ‘Voting and elections in the United States are corrupt.’
He said that especially in Detroit, Philadelphia, California, and many cities and states across the United States, even though there are fewer votes, it takes several weeks to ‘manipulate’ the results, that is, to count them.”
Instead of saying Brazil, Trump mistakenly wrote India. This is because the first round of Brazil’s presidential election was held on Sunday. According to the country’s election commission, 125.27 million votes were cast there. Once voting ended at 5 p.m., counting began and the results were announced.
In the Brazilian presidential election, the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, were among those who contested. Since neither of the two secured a majority in the first round, the second round of voting is set to be held on October 25.
At the same time, there is no presidential election in India. Indian President Droupadi Murmu has been holding the office since July 2022. Moreover, in India, the president is not directly elected by the people. The president is elected through the votes of MPs from both Houses of Parliament and MLAs from the states and Union Territories.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, there were about 980 million voters in India. President Trump has previously praised India’s election process. In particular, he said that the voter ID card system followed in India should be adopted in the United States. He had said that electoral reforms are needed in the United States.
He also said that when India’s Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar met U.S. officials, he asked how elections could be held in the United States without a photo ID card.