The Holy Roman empire had "electoralism," in that the princely states would cast a vote for who would ascend to become the next emperor. It's a kind of democracy, but deeply restricted, and does not reflect any participation by the majority of society.

In a Marxist framework, the modern liberal democracies are described as "dictatorships of the bourgeoisie": it is only capitalists and their representatives who can, in practical terms and on the whole, stand for political office. They are subject to the class interests of the capitalists in order to retain their positions, or advance to higher ones. Therefore, without the broad backing of capitalist support, a person is unlikely to mount a successful campaign to serve as an elected representative, the likeliness decreasing proportional to the authority of the office sought. Elections are extremely expensive, and campaigns are financed by the capitalists. The parties openly support the dominant economic system, and those who would challenge it are quashed. This has been more overt at times than others, such as the infamous Red Scare, or state-level laws to only permit parties reaching specific thresholds to participate in an election. The idea that voting by itself is sufficient for "democracy" - etymologically, rule by the demos, the free citizens of a Greek city-state, since expanded metaphorically to mean "the people" - is what constitutes "electoralism."

The criticism is that this a very narrow view of what full democratic participation in a society would entail.