Technically yes, but a functioning democracy requires that the election itself be democratic in the first place. As a simple example, which has happened countl

Technically yes, but a functioning democracy requires that the election itself be democratic in the first place. As a simple example, which has happened countless times in dictatorships: if Party X arrests all the candidates from opposition parties, then people who abide by the results of the election and the peaceful transfer of power from one member of Party X to another are in no way supporting a functional democracy. They are doing quite the opposite. (And yes, as the other reply pointed out, almost all democracies in the world can point to their foundation in bloodshed. At some point you had to transfer power away from the undemocratic regime previously in power, and they usually were not willing to be peaceful about it. Meanwhile, a desire to preserve peace in the face of a growing unsympathetic-to-democracy party who's gaining power for now through democratic means is the backstory of many of the times democracy has been lost.)