“Backslide” usually describes “developing” democracies, but I (with some academic backers) reject the notion that the “consolidated” democracies are fully “democratized” and therefore immune to description as “backsliding.”

My own colleagues pushed back. I was being extreme in my characterization of the decision, they said. Countries do not move along a simple democracy-authoritarianism continuum. They become less perfect democracies, but they do not become authoritarian. Ok. Maybe.

Even academic debate over voter ID takes its democratic compatibility for granted. Much of the discussion on the election-law listserv is dryly empirical. What are the effects of voter ID on turnout? To what extent does it really disenfranchise the groups activists claim it will? How can we operationalize those questions? Most – but thankfully not all – talk of voter ID is in terms of an utilitarian harm calculus. Regardless of the policy, democracy is safe in America.

I disagree. Democracy is relatively new in America, and “backslide” can describe our country as anyone else’s. The Polity IV index (PDF) considers America a stable democracy since 1809, even though slavery persisted for 56 more years. I would argue the transition to democracy happened over a century later, when federal voting rights legislation overturned systematic, mass disenfranchisement at the state level. One might argue the transition is still happening. Where is our enshrined right to vote? Why do elected officials control the elections that elect them?

In today’s NY Times, Adam Cohen draws on history to make the point much clearer than I had using comparative examples. Voter ID, he says, is a “modern poll tax.” Calling for federal regulation and standardization of election administration, he writes:

It is chilling to think that state legislators and election officials would intentionally try to make it harder for Americans to vote, but they always have — with poll taxes, literacy tests and gerrymandering. There was a time when the Supreme Court regularly struck these restrictions down. In 1966, it held Virginia’s $1.50 poll tax unconstitutional. In 1972, it ruled that Tennessee’s one-year residency requirement for voting violated the Constitution.

Now the Supreme Court has switched sides. This week, it upheld a harsh Indiana voter ID law that could disenfranchise many poor, elderly and student voters. The ruling will make it even easier for other states to block voters’ access to the ballot box

Read the article, especially the first few grafs, for appalling worst practices. Here’s a teaser: former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell in 2004 trashed voter registration forms printed on the ‘wrong’ paper weight.

Voter ID is contrived, incremental disenfranchisement through legal channels. It is consistent with historical stains on America’s democratic process, and it is consistent with contemporary examples of backslide worldwide: opposition-fragmenting districting in Morocco, ballot access restrictions and election ‘reform’ in Russia, and power-consolidating election ‘reform’ Kyrgyzstan, to name a few. As we promote democracy elsewhere, we should remember how new and fragile it is at home. We should promote it here too.

As a start, we should see the federalism of election administration for what it is: an excuse for states to inscrutably limit voting rights.

The short story: you cannot vote in Indiana unless you present valid, state- or federal-issued photo identification. The longer version: there is a fairly narrow list of accepted forms. If you don’t have one, you can fill out a provisional ballot and sign an affidavit as to your identity. If you want that vote to count, you have to go to the county seat within 10 days and sign another affidavit.

I have nothing against voter ID, even if solves a problem that doesn’t really exist. Except for people who don’t want their pictures taken, there nothing intrinsically wrong with voter ID…

…as long as the state accepts responsibility for issuing IDs to all citizens in an equal and accessible manner.

The social inequality of the policy as-is will be clear to anyone with SES columns in his spreadsheet. To vote without ID, you need a car and/or public transportation and considerable free time to dance with bureaucracy. To get a free ID, you need a car and/or public transportation and a valid birth certificate, which, if you don’t have one, means you need a car and/or public transportation and the free time to go get all this stuff.

This certainly will not increase turnout in the world’s most low-turnout established democracy. Especially among the poor and elderly – those without cars, mobility, free time, money or jobs that give them time to vote.

But these old arguments will be familiar to TDP’s Americanist audience. Rather than rehash the projected effects and underlying methodologies, I want to make three comparative points.

One. If the US constitution contained an equal and affirmative right to vote, no amount of judicial balancing would have produced this outcome. Unlike in the world’s other, established democracies, no such right exists. As such, SCOTUS has opened the door to similar policies in states itching to promulgate them.

Two. Even right-to-vote countries risk social inequality spilling over into political inequality. That’s why Canada’s electoral management body goes to people’s houses registering voters. With its policy of compulsory voting, Australia is similarly proactive about filling its rolls.

Three. Some say voting is a right, not a responsibility. If you want to vote, get off your lazy duff and make the preparations. That argument is a mask – one that secures buy-in among libertarian-oriented masses – for systemic efforts to steal elections where technology and learning make overt fraud obsolete. Around the world, parallel vote counts and international pressure have forced authoritarian leaders to “upgrade” their methods. By squeezing participation, restrictive electoral laws let dictators steal elections long before election day. As the number of competitive federal jurisdictions in America drops, state-level entry barriers make electoral conclusions more foregone in all but the most competitive years.

American democracy will survive voter ID, but it’s a step in the authoritarian direction. The short-term solution is affirmative state action to issue those IDs. In the long term, we need a federally guaranteed, equal right to vote.