Well...no.

Totalitarianism gets its name from the fact that the ruling power wants to permeate and dominate every aspect of public and private lives.

One of the cornerstones of democracy is a clear understanding that private life and values are protected as spheres of freedom (see, for example, Dewey's political philosophy). And that there is some form of Checks and Balances for the executive power.

For example, in a democracy, nobody should have a problem with you badmouthing the government in private. Additionally, you have every right to publicly question and/or demonstrate against state policies, even go to courts and have any and every decision judged regarding how well they fit with common law and/or the constitution, with a real chance for and consequence of courts deciding against the government. Nothing of that would be possible under totalitarian control.

That's exactly why the status as "democracy" of countries like Turkey, Russia, and arguably what the US are transformed into, are rightfully questioned. Not because they all necessarily directly swap to totalitarianism - that is basically the other end of a spectrum - but because central elements of the modern understanding of what it means to be a democracy are eroded or actively gotten rid of.

In well-functioning democratic regimes, parties rarely (if ever) get permanent power. They may win near-unopposed power in one election, but if they do things the population disagree with it's very likely they'll be voted out of power in the next election. And, generally speaking, there's always a mechanism for new legislatures to undo the actions of prior legislatures.

So even if a political party is out of power, they still have a role in governance, by publicly criticizing the party in power and advertising themselves for the next election. While they may not have any formal power in government, they have "soft power" in positioning themselves for the next election. The party in power typically knows this, so tends to avoid passing laws which will get them voted out in the next election. (Which will likely result in any draconian laws they pass getting reversed.) That's particularly true with laws which would leave a long-term negative impression of the party in the electorate - it's not just the next election they're looking to, but the all the elections in the future.

Additionally, knowing that at some point you will likely be the minority/non-governing power incentivizes quid pro quo behavior toward opposing parties, even when you have undisputed power. If you let the opposing parties have small "wins" when you're in power, then that opposing party is more likely to let you have similar small wins when you're out of power. Likewise, if you completely block other parties when you're in power, they're unlikely to let you accomplish anything, regardless of how minor, when you're out of power.

In totalitarian regimes, being "voted out" is not a concern. The people in power will stay in power, regardless of what laws they pass. Their agenda is permanent and will not be reversed. There's no incentive to listen to the opposition -- or even let the opposition voice their concerns in the first place!

In summary, the fact that the laws and the parties in power can be changed (eventually) by the populace is one thing which distinguishes a democratic system of government from a totalitarian one. And that long-term ability for change alters how parties work with short-term absolute power.

Typical Western democracys do not just have elections and laws. There is a constitution with inalienable rights, a separation of power between the government, the supreme court and the parliament, such that the government cannot control the others. Elections are fair and transparent.

In fake or failed democracies, the government controls the parliament and the courts (legislative and judicative), can change the constitution and manipulate elections.

There is no difference between a totalitarian regime that holds fake elections every now and then, and a democracy where the government decides in the next election and controls the parliament and courts, both are the same, one more honest than the other.

See also:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution#Democratic_constitutions
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_liberties
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfair_election

There is a very, very real risk with democracy, of the tyranny of the majority. Democracy has tyically been more emergent from specific conflicts and concerns, than created in fully functional form. Early Athenian Democracy and the reaction after the tyrant Peisistratos tried to extinguish it. The English Baron's War and Magna Carta, and Civil War that gave Parliament supremacy over the monarch. France and it's many revolutions and iterations of republic. Even in the US, we are currently witnessing how much of the democratic system there depended on norms. See Hungary for what happens if the guard rails come off, and a big enough electoral victory enables autocracy. Russia had something similar, although it can be reasonably argued they had not developed the civila society and ecology of institutions that make democracy function, eg a free press, right to protest, and education that includes critical thinking.

Westerm policies of trying to spread democratic goverenance around the world have proved more difficult than generally expected, and though sabotage corruption and coups by richer global powers usually to enable resource extraction have caused aof of the problems, by no means all. Very few peaceful transfers of power have happened in Africa. Two states in Latin America are prosecuting former presidential candidates who attempted coups, and El Salvador just formally became a duxtatorship. Singapore Taiwan and Korea are interesting examples of functioning democracies that have emerged from autocracies (though Korea recently had an attemoted coup). It seems democracy is more likely to succeed when instituted gradually, and it becomes part of people's expectations for their political lide that they will fight to keep, and to reform so as to keep functioning effectively.

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters."

-Winston Churchill

The greatest strength of democracy is in succession, in the transfer of power away from people and groups that are failing. They say it's not that candidates win elections, so much as governments lose them. The real hallmark of whether a democracy is functioning is that, the peaceful transfer of power.

The carnage typically involved in settling on a new Emperor in Ancient Rome shows the issue. The Maya were in the middle of a succession dispute when the Spanish arrived, greatly undermining their ability to resust, and allowing the Conquistador's to play one side against another. If a good Emperor or a good king or tyrant or lird protector rises to the top, autocracy can be very effective. Peter the Great in Russua, Henry the VIII in England, Alexander the Great, Cyrus the Great, Genghis Khan, were able to bring about huge transformations because of the concentration of power they developed. But conflicts over succession, bad leaders, and paralysis caused by factional conflicts, have typically undone the work of such effective leaders quite quickly.

Democracy is not perfect, but that is it's strength. It keeps the door open to reform, to shifts in power that don't destroy everything a previous iteration of ruler achieved. It can in a given moment operate better or worse, with a long view or for short-term goals based on lies. In the end it has been game-theory that has seen the ascendancy of democracies to the richest nations and most powerful militaries. China is challenging that, with longer term thinking about their national priorities than most democracies seem capable of, though of course with flaws and some hugely wasteful projects.

There is widespread dissatisfaction in the democratic world with the inability of current politics to change the increasing concentration of wealth in fewer hands. Tensions that ratchet up like that either generate pressure for change, or destruction. Equality has historically only increased following pandemics, disasters and wars. And accelerating increases in inequality seem to result in deathcamps or guillotines. I would argue democracy as a system is facing it's biggest challenge now, whether we can navigate rising social tensions, and looming climate disasters, and decreasing faith im democracy as an answer.

Joseph Tainter wrote The Collapse of Complex Civilisations, making the case that our idea of steady progress as the norm is a mistake, the collapse of empires and civilisations is the norm. Increasingly complex challenges emerge as civilisations grow, that test not just past capacity, but whether there is capacity to get more complex, to face the challenge. Democracy is not a cure-all for that, but it does make reform without destruction more likely, and the creativity of outsider voices more like to be heard. And that is no small thing.

From Aristotle’s political philosophy, the key issue is not the number of parties but the purpose of the regime. He distinguishes between correct governments i.e. rule by one, few or many (monarchy, aristocracy, politeia), that aim at the common good, and corrupt governments (tyranny, oligarchy, degenerate democracy) that pursue private interests.

In a politeia, the virtuous form of democracy, factions or parties are a natural expression of the plurality of interests in the polis. Even if one’s preferred party loses, the laws produced through the political process bind everyone because, ideally, they emerge from a shared deliberation aimed at the common good seen from the whole. It's not about the good of this or that part, nor the sum of some parts, but the whole that these parts constitute.

This is not equivalent to a totalitarian regime, because:

1. In a healthy democracy, there is real pluralism and participation.
2. Laws aim at collective well-being (= the whole), not at entrenching a faction’s power (= some parts).
3. Change remains possible through deliberation and elections.

Only when the ruling faction legislates for its own benefit (the part) rather than for all (the whole) does democracy decay into the kind of tyranny you fear.

Hope this helps.

For the purpose of this answer I'll understand the term "totalitarianism" loosely as an oppressive dictatorship.

It is true that the axes "degree of democracy" and "degree of human rights guarantee for all" are somewhat orthogonal. Many historic democracies have a terrible human rights record by today's standards: Slavery was rampant, women were dominated by men, and poor people had no rights. And surely, on the other end of the democratic spectrum, there were a few absolute monarchies where the subjects were lucky enough to enjoy peace and freedom as long as they didn't disrespect the sovereign. But still: There is probably a correlation between human rights and democracy, and I can conceive of a few reasons for that.

1. Laws conceived by a majority of the people and their representatives through some democratic process are more likely to respect individual freedoms than rules set by a dictator. Fault lines through a citizenship vary by issue; it's not always the same "us versus them". And for many questions there is simply no need to discriminate. In a dictatorship, by contrast, the fault line is between a violent regime and its people: Every individual is a potential threat to power and must be controlled.
2. The laws made in a democracy will often include a constitution — laws about how to make laws, meta-law, so to speak — designed to protect freedoms for everybody. This is a self-protection mechanism against changing majorities: "The majority" is not a static entity, it is constantly changing and evolving over time, space and topic. Only lunatics would make meta rules that could be used against them once they lose their majority.
3. Modern Western democracies like in the U.S., France, Germany etc. are the result of revolutions, uprisings and collapsed dictatorships. Their constitutions were specifically crafted to prevent human rights violations that were a mark of the previous regimes. Next to the previous two reasons this is the main reason why modern democracies have strong explicit human rights guarantees.

It depends on how much you identify with the voting collective

We are expected to respect and obey laws, providing that they are legitimate. Legitimacy is the quality which makes them something which ought to be obeyed.

Laws passed by a democracy are believed to be legitimate, in a way that laws passed by other political systems such as totalitarian states are not, because conceptually, democratic laws originate from your own personal intent and volition as a voter. Democratic laws are your own laws. The laws of a non-democratic state, by contrast, are the laws of the ruling party or clique and don't originate from you.

In practice of course, it often happens that a party you did not vote for gets into parliament and passes laws you do not personally agree with and on the face of it, it would seem that in that situation they are not really "your" laws at all.

However, in a democracy where you have exercised your right to vote, the "people" have spoken and selected a government that they, in aggregate, agree with or at least agree more than they disagree. As a member of "the people", the democratic government is still "your choice" in a collective sense, even though in an individual sense it may not have been your preferred choice at all and you may have voted for something different.

There is a question of how much you identify with "the people", or the nation, or the collective who participated in voting however it is called. If you strongly identify it, you can probably still feel that it is "your" legitimate government because although you didn't get the outcome you personally hoped for, a large number of your fellows and peers did and you are in some sense "happy for them", their good outcome is also your good outcome, because the boundary between "you" and "them" has a degree of porosity.

At the other extreme you may feel that you don't identify with "the people" at all, in which case it could be said that there is no difference with a non-democratic regime because in both cases it will be something of an external imposition, representing a collective you are not part of.

However, there could be psycho-social mechanisms that make the government "your" government as an individual, that don't involve voting or democracy. If the head of state is an inherited monarchy with some sort of mystical blood relationship with his subjects, or her subjects, that could potentially have the same legitimizing effect, making the head of state "you" in some sense, assuming you believe in it. Or other ways could be imagined.