Insistent on being Switzerland (neutral)

My father is kind of funny when it comes to politics. He just simply will not talk about it. One problem is he doesn't follow it at all, so he rarely knows what's going on. When the topic arises, he repeats the same old line over and over again - "I don't talk about politics. I've voted Democrat, Republican and Independent before." Then that's the end of his piece. What he doesn't explain is why he voted for these people/parties. The only time I recall him voting Republican is when he was younger and a GOP candidate said he wanted to lower the drinking age to where it'd be legal for my father to drink alcohol. That's far from the Republican Party platform of today. He's still not 100% sure why he voted Independent (Perot), perhaps because he was a tad funny looking and Dana Carvey did a great impersonation of him - I don't really know. I'm not even 100% sure why he's voted for Democrats in the past, outside of the fact his parents (father especially) were very Democratic and often times after a Republican had been in office for 4-8 years, my father will ask the question, "Am I better or worse off than I was before he entered office? Worse...so I'll go with the Democrat." I find it interesting why people vote the way they do. Often times, people's voting patterns are reminiscent of their parents or perhaps what the religious community teaches or because it's popular amongst certain circles. With my father, I still have no idea how to figure him out and my brother is starting to follow in his footsteps. I can empathize with my brother's position, because his wife and in-laws are rather staunch conservatives and he's much more liberal than they, so he tends to keep his mouth closed on such matters. With my father, it appears as if he's attempting to become nicknamed Switzerland. Perhaps I'll start calling him Berne, after the capital city of the country.