I've voted Pardon a few times early on, but nowadays, not anymore.

The reason is because the sheer amount of punishments compared to pardons; if I see a case I would pardon, I usually just skip it. And then it ends up as a punishment.

So, I just skip cases I would rather not punish, and then punish away, and rarely pardoning anymore. Anyone else like this?

We must be in the heavy valid report storm. Not to worry though the fully punished to 2 weeks players will reach that point again, then we'll see so many pardons.

I'm more lenient about small instances of raging or reports of intentional feeding that aren't obvious, so I pardon quite a bit, and it kills my streak a lot. I also have zero tolerance for flagrant swearing, AFK/Leavers, and harassment, so I'm more apt to hit punish where a lot pardon. I also tend to punish people saying they're reporting other players because they're having a bad game, or missed a skillshot that cost a team fight, or something similar. I tend not to punish if someone says screw this, I'm going afk or spams surrender, and a player lets the other player know that if they choose to do so, they'll be reported. I've been seeing a lot of "reported because they reported me" lately, so I've drawn a harder line on that recently.

the people doing the tribunal at the moment belive everyone is in a court room playing a video game and must refrain from any slang terms or a casual "wtf just happened" comment.

No worrys they will eventually move onto another game.

I tend to pardon a lot - 20-30% of cases. However, I believe this is why my accuracy is low, since some of those pardons are majority (close) punishes instead.

No biggie for me - Would rather be lenient with a decent rating than overbearing with a high one.

I'd say its about 80% punish.
Its rare that I find people who make it to the Tribunal who don't deserve it.
Contrary to popular belief its hard to make it to the Tribunal, so generally there's a reason for it.

It's the tribunal. You should expect most cases to be punish just by the nature of what causes people to report in the first place. I actually see more pardons than I would like, often times 1 game cases being pardoned for no good reason whatsoever, even if the player is being flagrantly abusive.

If you vote pardon to dont get to punish that person. boring.