Please Vote for Me shows the perils of unguided, unregulated, and unsupported democracy. To begin with, there was obviously a large potential for confusion and failure given the elementary school classroom setting. The teacher provides the class with the simple and seemingly fair task of electing a classroom leader from a choice of three classmates, but does not do enough to manage the ensuing potential for conflict. The election process turns into a chaotic battle for who can undermine his or her opponent the most, rather than a measurement of classroom leadership principles. To use Toqueville, it is seems that the democracy experiment does not work because the values and morals of democracy have not yet been internalized by society’s members, therefore not allowing for a full-functioning democratic system. The teacher’s attempt to hold elections, and install a democratic system was bound to fail. Dahl might argue, according to his many principles, that the methods of participation were undemocratic. For example, Xioafei is shouted down by her classmates before even getting a chance to perform. Not all candidates had the same opportunity to participate and speak to their constituents, and some faced more challenging obstacles than others. Finally, Luo Lei wins by essentially bribing his constituents. As adult voters might be swayed by bribery with money, this elementary school classroom is easily swayed by the appeal of the holiday cards, and elects the most authoritarian candidate. Multiple stages of the election process were undermined by unfair and immoral tactics, therefore collapsing the foundations of an already weak and unsupported system of democracy.
I agree that the students lacks the values consistent with promoting a true democracy and that this prevented the election from being truly democratic. Further, your assessment that a lack of regulation undermined the election. However, I wonder about the practical considerations that would be involved in attempting to regulation elections, i.e. how much regulation would be considered too much?