In a light-hearted, very innocent way, “Please Vote for Me” uses a third grade classes’ elections for class monitor as a model to touch upon overarching aspects of manipulation in democratic elections. When watching the film, I was struck by how early on, the children were taught to seek somewhat seditious avenues in order to assure that they would instead gain legitimacy. This can be seen when the students have to point out the faults of the other candidates. Similarly, presidential candidates spend an enormous amount of money on advertisements solely meant to degrade one another. Although effective for one’s publicity, these highly expensive ads demonstrate the toxic intersectionality of economic standing and authority in the presidential process. Ultimately, if you have more money you will have the ability to technologically reach more people. This dynamic is also apparent within the movie as Lou Lei is essentially able to buy his followers by having the class go on the monorail. Although that wasn’t the only aspect that went into the childrens’ decision, I am sure that this played a crucial part in the final results, considering he won with an enormous amount of support. In contrast, Xu Xiaofei who lives in a single-parent household does not have the economic abilities to provide such an expensive trip, and comes in last. Cheng Cheng too is also crushed. This truthfully surprised me a lot. It seemed as if he had a good standing with his classmates and he was successful at riling up the class during the debates. He was able to expose Lou Lei’s abusive tendencies and yet he only received around six or eight votes. His loss demonstrates the reluctancy for voters to break away from the norm. Lou Lei had already been class monitor for some time, and regardless of how they were mistreated, the students still voted for him.

While watching the film, I wondered a lot about the authenticity of what we were watching. This reminded me of how James C. Scott questioned the legitimacy of his own results considering people who are analyzed may act a different way than how they might usually act. I doubt that all of it was fabricated but I do think there were some parts that were subconsciously exaggerated for the cameras.