At a first glance, the elections depicted in Please Vote for Me seem to possess the necessary qualities of being democratic. A system is explained to the students to elect a class monitor where each class member’s vote will count the same and the candidate with the most votes will win. One might think that the implementation of this system will result in the best of the three candidates candidate being elected. However, as the documentary shows us, democratic elections cannot exist separately from a society’s history and culture and require the understanding of those voting in order to accurately reflect constituents’ preferences.

In order for a democratic elections to achieve what they set out to, voters need to be aware of their own ideologies or preferences, be able to identify differences between candidates who are running for election, and be able to then identify which candidate they prefer. However, Luo Lei is elected not because of his talent or his popularity with his classmates but because of the treats he hands out to his classmates after his speech. Additionally, all of the candidates’ (and their parents’) first reactions are to identify flaws in the other candidates rather than their own strengths. I think that the children’s inability to accurately select the best candidate is very much related to the point Tocqueville makes about why democracy is so successful in the US. Tocqueville observes the remarkable “equality of condition” in America, which had been achieved because America does not have a feudal history like Europe. Despite the teacher’s attempts to conduct a democratic election inside the classroom shown in the documentary, true democracy cannot coexist alongside the Maoist representations of discipline and order that are also present in the young students’ lives.