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With the glory and excitement of Tuesday night still washing over the land, the film "Election Day" was a highly detailed and essential reminder on voting and democracy. The filmmakers follow the actual participants in the balloting (and those even denied), but even more importantly follow the foot soldiers who get out the vote.

Director Kate Chevigny fielded 14 film crews on the day of the 2004 Presidential Election, November 2, to follow several locations as diverse as Chicago to Orlando to New York to Cincinnati, plus small towns in Wisconsin and Oklahoma. Even an Indian Reservation in South Dakota is profiled as it gets in on the referendum act.

My favorite story was the one on Jim Fuchs, the quixotic Republican committeeman in Chicago whose job was to make sure there wasn't any irregularities with the polls in the heavily Democratic Windy City (did he check the graveyards?). There was a smooth essence in the film crew who followed him, from familiar landmarks like the IHOP on Halsted and Grace to a conflict at a Wrigleyville voting precinct.

The rest of the film was as brightly absorbing. The fight of a single Native American to increase turnout on the reservation was poignant, as well as the disappointment of a ex-felon in Florida who can't vote due to the archaic suppression laws against him in the Sunshine state.

An Australian observer, assigned to St. Louis polling place becomes almost comic relief in rightly observing that poorer neighborhoods have chaotic voting opportunities, while wealthier areas of the city have no lines. It is in that wealthy sector where one poll worker insists that voting is a "privilege," and it takes the foreign observer reminds her that it is a "right."

Like America, "Election Day" is a multi-woven fabric of diverse circumstances, where one large empire comes together to allow its citizens to individually sit privately for a few moments, to decide the fate of their own government's direction. From the youngest first-timer in Wisconsin to the poll workers trying to bring order to angry voters, this is our country.

As Winston Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

It's a dirty job to preserve the democracy and the "right" to vote, but as Election Day strongly reminds, we need to thank those workers and those who show up to cast the ballot for the results of the new direction America moved on Tuesday.

*** stars

Pat McDonald is a Chicago based film critic and writer. Read his reviews and articles at...

http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/
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