The Polity index gives the 1900 United States a maximum democracy score

Evidence

One can see with examples that Polity stops too soon in its conceptualization of democracy. For example, the USA in 1900—when African-Americans did not have the vote in much of the country—is a Polity = 10 case. All you need to be a 10 in terms of voting is adult white males. A big of chunk of America—the South—was not very democratic at all, but the USA gets the maximum Polity democracy score nevertheless. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 424

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to the long literature on disenfranchisement in the Jim Crow South and to debates over what ‘democracy’ indices actually measure.
• ADDENDUM: Parallels the immodesty/moral-panic material in showing how a formal standard can be satisfied while the substance is absent — excluded people scoring inside the norm.