There are no democracies

I was in a Skypeland room with several UK people and one person from Israel. The Israeli claimed that there was no democracy anywhere in the world. He said he had an example that would prove it. He stated that in the last American election, 70 or 80% of the people voted. Therefore, he claimed that if someone gained 51% of the vote, they would be voted for by less half of the population. He said that this proved that there was no such thing as a democracy anywhere in the world (Holy cow. It seems that this person does not understand the American election system at all. According to the US census, 42.45% of the American public voted in the 2004 election, constituting about 60.7% of the eligible voters: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10492-2005Jan14.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2004 He obviously has never heard of the US electoral college either. And he does not understand the definition of democracy, or the different kinds of democracy.).

The Brits then gave another example of an election in the UK with 3 parties. The Israeli agreed that someone can be elected to parliament with a minority of the vote, as long as they have the plurality of the vote in a district, using the "first past the post" rule in the UK. (What on earth? Declaring the person who wins the most votes the winner means you do not have a democracy? These guys sound dumber and dumber the longer they talk to each other...).