'None of the Above' explores reasons behind not voting

John Callaway captures the complex contradictions of electing not to vote in a democracy in "None of the Above."

More than half of all eligible voters did not take part in the 1996 U.S. presidential election. It's an astounding statistic, and it raises a simple question: Why not?

Were they apathetic beyond caring? Angry beyond faith in the system? Or did they simply feel things were going along all right without their input?

To mark this off-year election season, "Chicago Tonight" host John Callaway brings out a new "WTTW Journal" documentary, "None of the Above," at 7:30 p.m. today on Channel 11. It asks the simple question, "Why don't Americans vote?" But, to its credit, it settles for no simple answers.

The documentary grew out of a study conducted during last year's presidential campaign by 'TTW and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. The study eventually broke nonvoters into five categories: "doers," well-informed but apathetic; "the unplugged," such as young people and transients who don't maintain a voting address for long; "irritables," people genuinely angry at the system to the point of despair; "don't knows," uninformed and determined to remain so; and "the alienated," who have lost all faith in government.

"None of the Above" looks at six persons - one couple and four individuals - who could be conveniently slapped into those slots. But instead of making the people fit the scheme, it uses the scheme to describe the people, and then looks at each of them as a complex and in many ways inexplicable human being.

"If you talk to the Medill people, they'll be the first to say those labels are very rough," Callaway said last week in discussing "None of the Above." "We kept the study in mind but were not bound by it. This was done in a spirit of cooperation. The Medill people said, 'If you find our work helpful, fine, and if not have a nice day.' "

What the study did, Callaway said, was jolt them out of any preconceptions. Some people don't vote because they're angry, sure, and others because they're apathetic, but others are more complex, and deep down no one's rationale is simple.

Political consultant David Axelrod comes right out and says politicians do little research on people who don't vote, and for obvious reasons. Why waste resources on something that won't help get you elected? "They're just not part of the equation," he says.

"We thought it was time someone gave them a say," Callaway counters.

The first couple, Holly and Michael Bowser of California, are staunch independents who all but step out of a mold marked "irritables." And as a young woman who is a waitress, student and actress in New York City, Giovanna D'Angello fits many of the "unplugged" and "don't know" traits as someone simply too busy to take an interest. But otherwise distinctions from person to person are rarely so clear-cut.

Gene Tencza seems to lump himself in with the "don't knows" when he says, "It ought to be left to the people who are interested in participating," adding, "I'm happy the way it is."

But as a Massachusetts machine tool designer who lives on a farm, he's a "doer" too, as are United Center cleanup-crew worker Michael Johnson and New Orleans attorney Frank RePass.

"I don't see anything they've done worth voting for," Johnson says.

"By far the most important thing in my life is to raise my children to be loving, intelligent, generous people," RePass adds.

The Johnson and RePass profiles succeed in transcending the mere topic of why people don't vote; they're character studies, not news pieces. At the same time, Callaway does find a way to confront the contradictions each person embraces. He asks Johnson what he would say to Martin Luther King Jr. about turning his back on one of the rights King fought so hard to attain. Likewise, Callaway allows that RePass may be disgusted by national politics, but then asks him if he wants his schools improved why doesn't he take a role in local politics?

In this, the documentary is a synthesis of the abilities of Callaway and producer Tom Weinberg, creator of "Image Union" and guiding force behind the excellent but short-lived 'TTW series "The 90's."

"I thought he'd be perfect for this kind of journalism," Callaway said. "He does a lot of laid-back listening-type photography and interviewing. And I thought I'd bring a little of the Callaway accountability in there. So we had fun in that sense. We teamed up, really - two sensibilities."

The result is something far advanced from the usual "Dateline," "20/20" or "48 Hours" theme piece. "We felt we were really out on a limb," Callaway said. "I wanted to get into their lives so we had some context. But the problem is we can't do that and then say, 'Therefore they don't vote.' "

The "problem," as Callaway saw it, is that "None of the Above" never establishes a causality between the way people are and the fact they don't vote. But that "problem" is in fact the documentary's greatest strength. People don't vote for a variety of complex reasons, and "None of the Above" projects that elusive truth without ever trying to pin it down.

In the end, it does find a way to refocus the discussion by bringing the interview subjects together face to face to watch an early version of the documentary with former Congressmen Paul Simon and Michael Flanagan. The politicians take a pretty good beating sometimes, but they give as good as they get, and in the end it's Tencza who puts things in perspective.

"There's a lot of stuff wrong with this country," he says, "and that's because it's run by human beings."

That human quotient is given a rare opportunity to express itself with all its contradictions intact in "None of the Above."

Ted Cox's column appears Monday and Wednesday in Suburban Living, Thursday in Sports and Friday in Time out!