Please Vote For Me! Democracy in Action

Since I can't seem to fall asleep until the early hours of the morning, I decided to watch an hour long documentary called Please Vote For Me. It follows the election of the class monitor of a third grade class. The catch? It is an exercise in democracy taking place in a Chinese elementary school. The interesting thing about it was that these children knew nothing about democracy, what it meant to vote, campaigns, and other election related things. The funny thing is that they perpetuated many of the same things we see here in elections. There were three candidates. The one little boy, Cheng Cheng really wanted to win, so from the beginning he was being underhanded, organizing the students to boo his opponent Xiaofei after she finished playing the flute for the talent portion of their little election. The other boy, Luo Lei, used gimmicks. His father arranged for the class to take a trip on the monorail and gave them what looked like tickets for the mid-autumn festival. All three thought of quitting at points when it looked like they had completely lost the class' votes. But their parents were right there to ensure their child won, acting as a sort of puppet master. The parents were very active in their children's campaign, writing their speeches, telling them how to present themselves, helping them sway their classmates. It was very similar to U.S. politics, how candidates appear prepackaged and often attack their opponents, something each child did during the debate portion. It was also similar on the voting end. There were undecided, abstainers, gender-line voters, party-line voters (in this case, the candidates' friends). In the end Luo Lei won, most likely because he had just given them the tickets, overshadowing his constantly strict behaviour as the present class monitor that was often brought up by his opponents.