August 21, 2003
Satisfying jury service can lead to voting, Gastil believes
John Gastil is certain of one thing: jury service, in some way, impacts voting behavior. Exactly how remains a mystery.
The associate professor of communication, aided by a recent $170,000 National Science Foundation grant, began a study earlier this month that will shed some light on that mystery.
“Nobody walks out of the jury room saying, ‘You know, I’m going to vote next September,’ ” Gastil said. “But somewhere in the back of your brain, you might be saying ‘That was a rewarding experience. I’m going to do another civic activity too.’ ”
A team of researchers, led by Gastil, is trying to gain a deeper understanding of how people are influenced by their service on a jury. The team will soon begin interviewing jurors in a single jurisdiction, like King County. The interviews will be conducted as jurors begin their duties, immediately after their work is done, and again six to 12 months after completing jury duty.
And Gastil is trying to get more funding in hopes of replicating a pilot study he completed last year. The study would collect jury-service and voting data from 10 counties across the country. That objective information will be coded and examined to determine how the jurors from a defined period of time voted before and after serving on a jury.
The pilot gained some notice when Gastil reported last year that service on a jury that reaches a verdict translated into a 10 percent increase in voting participation. A positive civic experience, he theorized, led jurors to take part in another civic act. Now he suspects the reverse could be true too.
“In all likelihood this could cut both ways,” Gastil said. “You could have a jury experience that is alienating, that is positively discouraging. Imagine you’re on a civil jury. You sit through the trial and think, ‘Oh my, this lawsuit is completely unfounded. I can’t believe they’re suing this person.’ You get into the jury room and a two-thirds majority is required and you discover that you’re in the minority. You can’t believe it and you feel powerless.
“I think it is plausible that your jury experience could be a net negative.”
Likewise, service on a jury that failed to reach a verdict, Gastil thinks, might lead to disenchantment and a decreased likelihood of voting. In fact there are any number of things that could go wrong for the juror that may negatively impact voting behavior.
He recalls a friend who believes she was eliminated as a potential juror because of her race.
“That can alienate a person from the political process,” he said. “Of course people can react a hundred different ways. She could say, ‘I’m going to vote and I’m going to elect people who are going to stamp this out.’ But people often get discouraged.”
Gastil thinks of the reaction to jury service as a spectrum. On one end it was a positive experience for the jurors. They deliberated and reached a conclusion. They served as agents of government and came to a satisfying and, in their minds, just conclusion. Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum is indifference. They served, but it wasn’t particularly memorable. On the other end of the spectrum it was a negative, alienating experience.
But whether the experience was positive or negative it seems to have some influence on voting behavior. The change, Gastil says, is happening in the unconscious mind, which makes it difficult to pinpoint.
Potential implications of the research are varied, according to Gastil. It could have a significant effect for developing nations considering the importance of a jury system as they draft a constitution. It could have moral implications for the justice system in the United States, especially in regard to lawyers who tend to employ cold strategy during jury selection. And at the very least it will add insight into the understanding of how public deliberation impacts civic engagement in general and voting in particular.
“Juries have this incredible power. You come out of that jury room no longer the same person. You’re not just a person who is subject to a government. As long as you did a good thing and you feel like you did the right thing, that will be a powerful, positive feeling.”
