A Fourth of July Mystery

There are a number of fundamental principles that make the United State an amazing place to live. Most of the time we enjoy them and take them for granted without thinking about them very much. There are always debates as to which of the fundamental rights are most important to our nation, but I would suggest that the right of the individual to have his/her day in court when accused of a crime and the right of every person to vote are the two most important privileges citizens have in this country.
I have only served on one jury. I have gladly responded when summoned. The times I have been called to be on a panel the defense lawyers almost always excuse me because ministers are profiled as being harsh, vindictive, and judgmental (something that saddens me greatly). The jury that I served was in Texas and the case was a charge of drunken driving for a construction worker. The crew had topped off a building, brought a barrel of iced beers to celebrate, and then the worker drove home. He claimed he had only a “couple of beers” but the Breathalyzer had a different story. But society paid the jury, the judge, the jailers, the clerks, the prosecutor and a host of other people good salaries so that man could protest his innocence.
That same thing goes on every day all across the country. As a society, we pay an immense amount of money for a legal system that is created to enable each of us to have our day in court. We have invested large amounts of time and energy to try to make a system that begins with the assumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Certainly there are all kinds of evidence that the system has flaws; that money has power to distort the process; that race has played a major part in the outcome of too many cases; and that the system is over burdened with too many cases. But as a nation the USA has invested a remarkable amount of resources in creating a system to try to protect the rights of an individual.
The same can be said for the effort made by society to establish the right of everybody to vote. We as a nation have been working very hard over the last two hundred years to create a system of democracy so that all citizens are entitled to vote. It is well known that even with the highest of ideals – “all men are created equally and endowed by their creator with certain rights” – the country did not actually live up to that standard for a long time. It has been a long hard fought journey to the right to vote for all citizens. But as a country we have invested great energy, get resources, get time to making democracy available. The recent run-off election, the total cost to all counties to conduct that election, I am told, was over $3 million dollars. That is an incredible amount to spend so that less than 200,000 people can have a say in selecting a candidate. Not picking the Senator, just voting on picking a candidate.
We have good reason to be proud of our country on the Fourth of July for its commitment to protect the legal rights of individuals and to insure the right to vote of all citizens. The mystery is that most of us as individuals keep trying to figure out how to avoid jury duty and so often fail to show up to vote.