On November 2, 2004, the day of the Bush-Kerry showdown, filmmaker Katy Chevigny deployed a dozen-plus film crews across a great swath of the country, from Wisconsin to Florida, to track a cross-section of the American citizenry exercising their franchise. The result is the masterful verité documentary Election Day, which cuts across race, class and ethnicity to give us a snapshot of a politically-informed and galvanized America. Included in this dense fabric: a bulldog-like Chicago poll-watcher; American-Indian activists struggling to turn the tide of their community's traditionally low turnout; a Muslim woman urging her family to vote; lower-class black voters weary and frustrated by polling discrepancies; an ex-felon casting his ballot for the first time; working-class parents struggling to make ends meet, cynical of America's widening economic gap; and an Australian election observer, clearly concerned about the intolerably long voter wait-times, and inadequately equipped polling stations. Underscoring all these stories is their subjects' enduring and passionate belief in democracy. For her open-hearted yet gently caustic style, Chevigny proves herself a worthy inheritor of Frederick Wiseman and his Direct Cinema compatriots. The verité sights and sounds give us a charming, engrossing glimpse of everyday America, and, in the shrewdness with which they're cut together, offer an unmistakable critique of the voting system, and—seen three years since the Bush reelection—of the tragic path we've been led down since.  Jay Antani