Tom, interesting thread, but I want to return to your seemingly minor point. As a political scientist and an old guy, I assert that for democracy to exist three conditions need to be present:
1. Free, competitive, and periodic elections to select leaders open to a majority of the adult population as voters.
2. Sufficient freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly so that electoral campaigns can be organized and policies widely debated.
3. An impartial mechanism for the settlement of disputes that in most Western states is an independent court system. (Not required is American style judicial review - see the UK.)
If all of these conditions are not present, then you do not have democracy but something else. What that something else is may be "good" or "bad" but it is not democracy. I would argue that this definition is both universal and necessary for the concept of democracy to have any meaning.

Cheers

JohnT