What is the most likely result of summoning a non-registered voter for jury duty?
In my opinion, summoning non-registered voters for jury duty is a huge waste of taxpayer money and courtroom time. Having said that, it should certainly be very easy for a non-registered voter to add him/herself to the prospective juror database if desired. I will begin by describing four possible reasons why a person may not be registered to vote:
Possible Reason 1: The person wants to register to vote, but is unable to successfully complete the registration process due to one or more unresolved hurdles. Many people may not be aware that in some communities, this is a significant problem. The most common scenario is that of people who do not have sufficient forms of identification, and are unable to obtain such due to logistical and/or financial issues. Even with the help of special community outreach programs, the problem is still prevalent.
Possible Reason 2: The person wants to register to vote, but is unable to successfully complete all of the necessary steps to do so even though s/he does not have any truly good reasons for such. It could be as simple as the person being an endless procrastinator, or being unable to stay focused on a task for more than a few moments before getting distracted and forgetting all about it.
Possible Reason 3: The person simply doesn't care about voting in general. It is not a matter of being “fed up with politicians,” or a having a lack of trust in “the system.” S/he simply doesn't care about voting, and probably doesn't care much about anything in general. His/her attitude is that the entire matter of voting is “someone else's problem,” and s/he is willing to accept (and/or ignore) any outcome of any election.
Possible Reason 4: The person does care about voting, and understands the historical and present-day implication and significance of such. However, s/he believes that we are consistently only offered non-viable candidates as options. S/he doesn't think it makes a difference who is in power since politicians are not held accountable for their actions, and there is no realistic means by which The People can remove a politician from office if his/her campaign promises go unfulfilled without reasonable justification for such (e.g, extenuating or unforeseen circumstances). S/he also doesn't see any purpose in the “moot point” exercise of going to the polls to write someone in who could never possibly win. S/he refuses to follow the popular advice to vote for the “lesser of two evils” since, by definition, such a candidate is still “evil.” I am a non-registered voter for Possible Reason 4.
Before discussing how all of this relates to jury duty, I want to say yet again that anyone who wants to register as a potential juror in their county should be able to easily do so regardless of whether they are a registered voter, and regardless of how often the county updates its database of prospective jurors. A county courthouse may take years to update its records, and in that time, a willing juror could easily move into and back out of the county without ever having been called. I'm not talking about volunteering for a specific case and/or being summoned at any given frequency—I'm talking about simply registering to be included in the database, and accurately so.
Having said that, let's now look at each of the above four scenarios as they apply to jury duty. Most likely, the non-registered voters described above will simply disregard their jury duty summonses. In the first scenario, the person in question will not even be allowed into the jury waiting room without having a driver's license or State ID card. In the second scenario, if the individual were to ever clean off his/her desk, s/he would likely find jury duty summonses that are more than a decade old. The person will simply never make it into court unless someone shows up at his/her door and figuratively “drags” him/her in. In the third scenario, attorneys might actually consider the person in question to be a good juror since s/he won't “make any trouble,” but having such a person on a jury is equivalent to trying a (criminal) case with a jury of only 11 people instead of 12. Is this a big deal? If nothing else, it's not how our system of justice was designed. In the fourth scenario, the person in question will almost certainly never be picked for any case since s/he will be classified as an “independent thinker,” and as someone who will not be easily swayed. Lawyers are known to favor jurors who do not come to court harboring strong opinions and prejudices, as well as jurors who don't “overthink” things.
As with many topics in this book, this is all just something to think about and/or discuss with those concerned. If we don't summon non-voters for jury duty, some people will say that we are not getting a fair cross-section of the population. Some people will also say that this creates an incentive to not vote. This ties in with the rest of the book. Why do so many people consider jury duty to be so dreadful? I stand by my suggestion that our jury duty system should be primarily volunteer-based, and that no one should be “forced” to serve since such only results in wasted taxpayer money and a waste of courthouse time and resources.
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Possible Reason 1: The person wants to register to vote, but is unable to successfully complete the registration process due to one or more unresolved hurdles. Many people may not be aware that in some communities, this is a significant problem. The most common scenario is that of people who do not have sufficient forms of identification, and are unable to obtain such due to logistical and/or financial issues. Even with the help of special community outreach programs, the problem is still prevalent.
Possible Reason 2: The person wants to register to vote, but is unable to successfully complete all of the necessary steps to do so even though s/he does not have any truly good reasons for such. It could be as simple as the person being an endless procrastinator, or being unable to stay focused on a task for more than a few moments before getting distracted and forgetting all about it.
Possible Reason 3: The person simply doesn't care about voting in general. It is not a matter of being “fed up with politicians,” or a having a lack of trust in “the system.” S/he simply doesn't care about voting, and probably doesn't care much about anything in general. His/her attitude is that the entire matter of voting is “someone else's problem,” and s/he is willing to accept (and/or ignore) any outcome of any election.
Possible Reason 4: The person does care about voting, and understands the historical and present-day implication and significance of such. However, s/he believes that we are consistently only offered non-viable candidates as options. S/he doesn't think it makes a difference who is in power since politicians are not held accountable for their actions, and there is no realistic means by which The People can remove a politician from office if his/her campaign promises go unfulfilled without reasonable justification for such (e.g, extenuating or unforeseen circumstances). S/he also doesn't see any purpose in the “moot point” exercise of going to the polls to write someone in who could never possibly win. S/he refuses to follow the popular advice to vote for the “lesser of two evils” since, by definition, such a candidate is still “evil.” I am a non-registered voter for Possible Reason 4.
Before discussing how all of this relates to jury duty, I want to say yet again that anyone who wants to register as a potential juror in their county should be able to easily do so regardless of whether they are a registered voter, and regardless of how often the county updates its database of prospective jurors. A county courthouse may take years to update its records, and in that time, a willing juror could easily move into and back out of the county without ever having been called. I'm not talking about volunteering for a specific case and/or being summoned at any given frequency—I'm talking about simply registering to be included in the database, and accurately so.
Having said that, let's now look at each of the above four scenarios as they apply to jury duty. Most likely, the non-registered voters described above will simply disregard their jury duty summonses. In the first scenario, the person in question will not even be allowed into the jury waiting room without having a driver's license or State ID card. In the second scenario, if the individual were to ever clean off his/her desk, s/he would likely find jury duty summonses that are more than a decade old. The person will simply never make it into court unless someone shows up at his/her door and figuratively “drags” him/her in. In the third scenario, attorneys might actually consider the person in question to be a good juror since s/he won't “make any trouble,” but having such a person on a jury is equivalent to trying a (criminal) case with a jury of only 11 people instead of 12. Is this a big deal? If nothing else, it's not how our system of justice was designed. In the fourth scenario, the person in question will almost certainly never be picked for any case since s/he will be classified as an “independent thinker,” and as someone who will not be easily swayed. Lawyers are known to favor jurors who do not come to court harboring strong opinions and prejudices, as well as jurors who don't “overthink” things.
As with many topics in this book, this is all just something to think about and/or discuss with those concerned. If we don't summon non-voters for jury duty, some people will say that we are not getting a fair cross-section of the population. Some people will also say that this creates an incentive to not vote. This ties in with the rest of the book. Why do so many people consider jury duty to be so dreadful? I stand by my suggestion that our jury duty system should be primarily volunteer-based, and that no one should be “forced” to serve since such only results in wasted taxpayer money and a waste of courthouse time and resources.
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