“Your name has been selected by the Jury Commissioners for prospective jury service.”
I’m the sort of person who would normally be very glad to read that. I’ve never served as a juror, and while I do not overestimate the excitement of serving on a jury outside a Hollywood set, I do value the sense of civic duty.
Watch an episode of The West Wing called “In This White House” from early in the second season. It features a strong sense of civic duty, and contains one of twelve Aaron Sorkin moments that’s guaranteed to make me cry.
So I should have been glad to receive a notice about jury duty. Instead, I am just amused. See, the return address on the envelope begins:
“Chittenden County Clerk”
Some of you may not be sufficiently familiar with the geography, so I will introduce three facts:
- Boston is in Suffolk County
- “Suffolk” is not just another spelling of “Chittenden”
- Chittenden County is in Vermont
This leads us to three interesting conclusions.
First, it would be hard to serve on a jury in another state. Unless they have better teleconferencing hardware than I expect.
Second, I could apparently have voted in Vermont for the last two years, while also voting in Boston.
Third, Vermont is comfortable asking me to serve as a juror even though I haven’t paid them any taxes in the last two years. If they think I still live there, shouldn’t that have come to somebody’s attention by now?