Not Quite a Blog

You'd be surprised how many people I talk to who refuse to register to vote do so because they think (correctly or incorrectly) that this will lead to them being called less for jury duty. Well, I usually say, not everyone votes; that is, the judicial machinery typically has to use other sources of data on local residents to fill out their jury pools, such as motor vehicle records. By saying this, I'm trying to make the case---although I must admit I cannot know for sure---that it's more valuable to play a regular part in representative democracy than to fear the occasional jury duty call (and, besides, you'll probably get those anyway if you drive, etc.).

Now, from the San Mateo County Elections Blog, we learn that the case can be even worse: if your DMV and voter registration records don't match, you might get called for jury duty much more often ("Jury Duty pool comes from DMV and Voter Registration"). The take-away seems to be that it's in your best interests to make sure that your DMV and voter registration records agree such that the powers that be think there's only one human out there at your physical, mailing, etc. addresses with various permutations on your name.

Unfortunately, this only increases the relevance of the arguments from the people I describe at the beginning of this post. Sigh.

One thing I think everyone should take a moment to consider is standardizing their own name. What the hell, you say? Well, about ten years ago I settled on always writing my name down the same way, "Joseph Lorenzo Hall" (this was right after I had decided not to change my name due to my name being "Joseph L. Hall" in the drafts of my first real paper). People can call me whatever they want, but when they write a name down---or use a name in an official capacity---that refers to me, it should be the full thing, "Joseph Lorenzo Hall". I think, but cannot prove, that this has lead to some real benefit to me.