Jury Aversion and Voter Registration

Autor: Raymond E. Wolfinger, J. Eric Oliver
Rok vydání: 1999
Předmět:
Zdroj: American Political Science Review. 93:147-152
ISSN: 1537-5943
0003-0554
DOI: 10.2307/2585766
Popis: Election officials often say that many Americans do not register to vote for fear of being called to jury duty. The only published study on the topic claims that aversion to jury service depresses turnout by more than seven percentage points. We use questions from the 1991 National Election Studies Pilot Study to ascertain beliefs about the sources of jury lists, and we relate those impressions to registration status. We find that barely half the public professes any knowledge of how juries are chosen, and just 42% believe that they come from voter registration records. Estimations from a multivariate analysis indicate that fear of jury service accounts for less than a one percentage point drop in turnout. We discuss the implications of this finding both for reform proposals and the rational choice theory of turnout.
Databáze: OpenAIRE