I believe that the documentary Please Vote for Me does show an instance of democracy in action. Here I feel as if the three candidates are representative of bigger motifs in national and global political society. Lou Lei seems to represent the established centrist, while respectively I took Cheng Cheng and Xiaofei to be loosely representative of the right and left. Noting this, I believe one can pull from the Burmeo thesis in that when presented with a candidate that has the potential to threaten democracy, the general populace moves to the middle. I believe the class was aware of Cheng Cheng’s “machiavellian” actions and actively voted against them. Cheng Cheng I believe also had something like this hypothesis in mind when he brought up heavily Lou Lei’s history of violence and tried to play that against him in the political arena. I believe the final scene of the election also played a big role in the documentary. Barring terrible government or perceived disaster of some sort I believe that many voters are just looking for something to sell to them that the current state is okay, because with change there will be increased uncomfortable uncertainty, especially in a very new democracy, and the gifts that Lou Lei brought out for the class before the vote was that indicator to the class that his tenure as class monitor wasn’t that bad and potentially there was something to lose when voting for another candidate. It may be possible that this feeling goes back deeper into Chinese history and culture to the time of dynasty rule. There, it was only common for an Emperor to lose support if there was a natural disaster or some other sign from a higher power that the current ruler was not fit for the position.