I’m writing this a few hours after I dropped off my absentee ballot at the county complex, which has been busy with early voters both times I’ve popped in this month. (I wish I could say the same during the primary, when the library polling was less lively than a sewer commission meeting.)

The Presidential election is a day away. I’m not alone in hoping it will signal more than a seasonal end of T-shirts saying Sarah Palin should be aborted or comparing Barack Obama to a monkey. I’m not alone in hoping it will be a shift away from the feeling that we need to divide ourselves that way. I’m not alone in hoping it will be a shift toward a willingness to work with one another toward common goals — peace, prosperity and cheap fuel (if only we could heat our homes with the energy created by kids in Heelys in the soda aisle).

Watching “Slacker Uprising,” Michael Moore’s documentary about his admittedly failed attempt, five weeks before the 2004 election, to mobilize young voters to vote (and vote, not so much for Democratic candidate John Kerry, but against President George W. Bush) is unpleasant — but I think that’s a good thing. There are always those who urge decency and condemn dirty tactics in an election. This time, in 2008, it feels like it’s working. Which means we’re learning.

But in Michael Moore’s 2004, almost everyone looks bad (and the sound quality is often wretched). Joan Baez looks naive when she calls Moore “the most eloquent” and “compassionate” man in the contest. She’s deluded; it’s snarky, politics-as-usual in this movie. Moore leers at a group of West Virginia protesters that they, Republicans, are “deviant” and refers to Democrats as being “stranded” in Utah. Eddie Vedder sneers, “who the f*** is going to volunteer?” for the military. (Maybe he should ask someone who wants to defend their friends, get out of a small town, or dream of college.) Roseanne guffaws that Christians all dig shooting abortion doctors. Moore seems to hold his worst lashings for members of the media, saying not a single one did their job in questioning the Iraq war. He should ask the folks at Knight Ridder, the ones who wrote the Sept. 6, 2002 headline, “Lack of hard evidence of Iraqi weapons worries top U.S. officials.” Or he could ask CBS’s Lara Logan about that; the embedded journalist would have him in tears faster than you can say Waziristan.

Way to rise above the name-calling. Way to focus on the issues. Way to get us to put down the tug-of-war rope and unite. Divisiveness didn’t work then. It doesn’t do us any good to giggle at stumbling,

man-on-the-street Republican interviews — or to call Moore the anti-christ.

There’s a way to mobilize people with negativity. Michael Moore is hardly the biggest culprit in that arena. “Slacker Uprising,” at least, showed us that vilification, a well trod road (why do you think

they call it mud-slinging?), has turned into an impassible rut. For every one. In every party. Maybe this year we’ll stop spinning our wheels — and pave the road together.

Ashley O’Dell writes about movies that aren’t in theaters anymore.