Last fall, without realizing it, many students volunteered themselves for the civic duty of serving as jurors in the Philadelphia courts.
Penn students from all over the country have received Philadelphia jury duty summons as a result of registering to vote in Pennsylvania for the 2008 presidential election.
In Philadelphia, jurors are randomly selected to serve from lists of registered voters and adult licensed drivers. Being on either list enables a person to be selected for jury duty.
According to College senior Annassa Corley, president of Penn Leads the Vote — a nonpartisan group that promotes election participation — multiple groups worked to register voters on campus prior to the 2008 election. Penn Leads the Vote, Penn Democrats and other groups not affiliated with the University all made efforts to get out the vote, Corley said.
Corley explained that serving as a juror is a civic duty that goes along with voting and paying taxes. By registering to vote, Corley said, a citizen enables him- or herself to be selected.
College sophomore Jacob Nussbaum — originally from Charleston, S.C. — received a letter in early December 2009 notifying him that he was selected to serve for a trial scheduled for Jan. 4 in Philadelphia.
Nussbaum said he was able to bring the letter to the College Office in Claudia Cohen Hall, which sent a letter to the Philadelphia court system explaining his status as a full-time student. According to Nussbaum, that was the last he heard about the matter.
College sophomore Irene Rivera had a similar experience last summer. She received a jury duty notice forwarded from her school address to her home in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, for a trial scheduled at the beginning of the fall 2009 semester.
She wrote back to the Philadelphia courts, stating that because she was a college student relying on financial aid, she could not run the risk of missing weeks of class due to the possibility of an extended trial.
She was not contacted again about serving.
Comments
Student is Legal Resident of Home State
Some parents have been forwarding absentee ballots to students to vote in their home states. Change of mailing address processes in some states make it difficult to update in time dormitory address revisions.
So I am wondering:
1) Are students who register to vote in Pennsylvania knowingly relinquishing residency in their home states and being consistent with residency for all purposes? Did they just sign up because they were told to and it seemed exciting? I would hope that students are more thoughtful in their decisions which would have prevented being surprised by the juror summons. Did these newly registered voters also change their driver's licenses to Pennsylvania's?
2) When Penn staff tallied in 2008 how many students voted, I believe they included just those who voted in Pennsylvania or maybe even just in Philadelphia. Why didn't they include students who voted in their home states? Penn population denominator should be all students who are registered to vote, not just those who registered (some maybe unintentionally) in Pennsylvania. Then numerator should be all students who actually voted whether in person or via absentee ballot, but staff would not know unless they asked all students if they voted. And, of course, Ivy League schools should all use the same definition in order to compare which school had the most student voters.