Notes from my Knapsack 8-31-23

Notes from my Knapsack 8-31-23
Jeff Gill

Service and civic opportunities
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When it comes to serving your country, that phrase most quickly brings to mind enlistment in the armed forces. We salute all veterans and the family members who supported them in that kind of service to our nation, but I'm thinking of some different sorts of opportunity more broadly available to citizens wanting to show their patriotism.

The most basic form of public service is voting. Not everyone can vote, children and foreign nationals for starters. The big issue is that not everyone who can does: only about 60 to 70% of those who could vote do so, and that's in high turnout elections.

Failure to register in the first place keeps that number down, some register but don't vote or move and their voter registration lapses, and others just don't show up, which is why political parties are interested in what they call GOTV or "getting out the vote." If in more mundane election cycles you have about half of the eligible population going to the polls, smaller and smaller fractions of the whole can change the outcome.

Along with voting, paying taxes is something many of us do, but not all: in 2022 it was about 60% of all households that paid income tax. Of the 40% that didn't, they are still in many cases paying FICA (Social Security and Medicare, "Federal Insurance Contributions Act" at 6.2% & 1.45% of gross wages, respectively), and we all end up paying sales taxes or gas tax somewhere somehow. I find disputed sources on how many pay property tax, but I think the average renter would share my suspicion that much property tax cost is passed along to them. In one form or another, we all pay taxes, probably more than how many of us vote.

So as citizens, we can and should vote, we kind of have to pay taxes, and there's military service. But when it comes to citizenship, I think on the list of basics there's one we don't talk about enough.

There is jury duty. I would argue on behalf of our judicial system that in line with voting and taxpaying and honoring the flag, responding to a call for serving on a jury is a basic element of citizenship. Without jurors, we can't deliver on those constitutional promises of a trial by a jury of your peers, and the harder it is to find jurors, the slower the course of justice can be, and a speedy trial is one of those basics we want to honor as well.

I'm writing this because I continue to be amazed at the good, upstanding people who consider a request for jury duty nothing but a burden and inconvenience. And I know full well: being on a jury can be burdensome, but it's not a 55 pound pack or a forward deployment. Jury duty is inconvenient, but it's not a tour in a combat zone. Serving as a juror, though, is an element of our national polity as much as registering to vote, paying taxes, or having a certain number of us willing to serve in uniform.

I started writing this thinking about the further opportunity to serve as an elected or appointed official in the small quiet corners of our civc life, but hearing my umpteenth protest that it's ridiculous to ask a busy person to do jury duty caused me to change course. I hope putting it in this context changes yours.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's served on multiple juries. Tell him about what you learned responding to a jury summons at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.