I grew up in Louisiana, home of America’s illiterates in two languages. I thereby claim a lifetime handicap in all matters of spelling pronunciation and grammar. It’s not that Louisiana is wrong, the rest of the nation is spelling imagination impaired.
And dictionaries do catalog common usage. Common usage is that Democracy means “representative government of democratically elected representatives.”
And I just documented in a post that it was used that way to refer to our government by a President no less, at least as far back as 1864.
Well met, sir. I would be honored to share more beers than we should have at one sitting, and a spirited conversation with you any time...