One frustrated SF resident recently noted that they've been called and served within the last 10 months — and can't recall a single year going by without a summons landing in their mailbox. Meanwhile, they have friends in their 70s, retired, willing, and ready to serve, who have never once been called. The question practically asks itself: what exactly is going on with this system?

Here's what we know. California law technically requires a one-year gap between jury service obligations. San Francisco's Superior Court uses a supposedly random selection process pulled from voter registration rolls, DMV records, and tax filings. The operative word there is "supposedly." Because if the same people keep getting flagged while entire swaths of the eligible population sit untouched, the randomness of this system deserves some serious scrutiny.

This isn't just an inconvenience problem — it's a civic fairness problem. Jury duty is one of the few direct obligations of citizenship, and when the burden falls disproportionately on the same pool of compliant, easy-to-find residents, it undermines the whole point of a jury of one's peers. The people who keep their addresses updated, who register to vote, who file taxes on time — they're essentially being penalized for being responsible.

Meanwhile, San Francisco courts routinely struggle with juror no-shows. The city has historically had abysmal response rates to jury summonses. So instead of fixing enforcement for people who ignore the call, the system apparently just keeps hammering the folks who actually show up.

The fix isn't complicated. Better data hygiene, broader sourcing of eligible jurors, and actual enforcement against chronic no-shows would go a long way. But that would require the city's court administration to invest in modernizing a system that, like so many San Francisco bureaucracies, seems to run on inertia and good enough.

Don't hold your breath — but maybe keep holding that jury summons.