“In the United States, you first elect the electors and then they vote for the presidential candidates. In Russia, the president is elected through the direct vote of the whole population — that might be even more democratic,” says Putin. “And you have other problems in your elections. Four years ago, your presidential election was decided by the court. But we’re not going to poke our nose into your democratic system because that’s up to the American people.”

Touche. I guess it is also very ironic that this criticism is coming out of Russia - the U.S.A.’s long Cold-War enemy. But it stands to know that the U.S. is not beyond criticism - even for the very treasured democracy that we claim to maintain so purely and to export from said “purity” to the rest of the world.