Democracy. Somedays it's can't live with it, can't live without it.
I crashed the boards for Obama. Went to Pennsylvania for a month to work 12 hour days seven days a week. Maxed out my contribution limit when we couldn't quite afford it. I was so tired election eve I just broke down and cried at the watch party and went home and to bed early. I know it's all worth it, but my reward was going to be the big party on inauguration day. I can't go to DC, but at least I was going to arrange for some spousal coverage for childcare and take inauguration day off and party! PARTY!
Got back from a Christmas trip over the weekend, picked up the mail and found: a jury summons.
Yep, I've got jury duty starting 45 minutes before the swearing in.
Go ahead and discuss: jury duty in America. Have you been called, served, asked to weigh the ultimate penalties?
I've been called dozens of times now, and have been picked but once. Or nearly so. It was a capital murder case back in Pennsylvania, and despite my nuanced opinions when qua vire'd about the death penalty, both sides were stuck with me because they were out of peremptory challenges. But then...it turned out one of the witnesses was a police officer who lived across the street from me.
I will roughly estimate that I've spent a month on jury duty without ever being on jury duty at this point in my life.
I had an idea, by the way: to allow volunteer poll workers (such as myself for quite a long time before this election) to get out of jury duty. It would be recognizing working elections as a civic duty, and would provide some incentive for more people to volunteer. I sent a note to my state legislator a few years ago about this, never heard back. Whaddya think?