Except in the U.S., electors are required to vote for the candidate that won the majority of the popular vote in their state. They're honorary officials and rarely have any autonomy, though that is governed by state laws, not national laws.
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/e...
The facts are still the definition of the word "election" and the contents of the national constitutions. There is no amount of rhetorical gymnastics that you can perform to make "Hitler was elected" anything other than a provably false statement.
It doesn't matter. Clearly, there is no specific requirement that a democratic society has to pick its leadership in free and fair elections, nor do elections prevent jerkasses from becoming dictators.
US President Obama was not elected, either. He was appointed by majority vote of the Electoral College. This is a hair-splitting, technical, de jure distinction, obviously, but denying that it exists is pretending that the republic is more democratic than it is in fact.
An election is a popular vote. A parliamentary or republican representative vote is not an election, regardless of how much it may superficially resemble one.