The election; Illusion or Real?

Hi

First, I'm breaking the habit, no photo for this post.

Today is the election day for Iran's parliament. The (Iran's) media try very hard to say that everyone should vote, and who doesn't vote is listening to enemy's media and is against the government. (or even whole Iran)

BBC Farsi tries hard to convince people to not vote, and people who agree with Iran's system use this as a tool to say that because they are our enemy, we should opposite of what they say.

But the way I see it, it's just immature to believe that what BBC says out loud is exactly what it wants. It's a cover for other things they want and that's how the media work these day. When they want to increase smoking to sell more cigarettes, they don't make a movie in which the main point is that smoking cigarette is bad, they just cast few famous people and make them smoke in important scenes and look cool, the main point of the movie could be how bad cigarettes are, but eventually people will smoke more, because that cool guy was smoking it.

So in the case of election and BBC I think what BBC really wants is to split people to two groups, those who agree with the system and those who are against it, just based on voting (or not voting). And Iran's media made it possible, by trying hard to convince people to vote and relate it to all the martyrs of the war and other symbols. So if someone doesn't vote, he/she is considered against those symbols.

Sadly, that splitting is what they want and we're giving them willingly, it's not about voting or not.

What I'm curious about is how elections are in your country?
How your media cover those?
Do they try to convince them to vote?
Is anyone against it?