Everywhere we turn these past few days, we hear the same weary refrain. “I’m so glad it’s almost over,” people say. “I can’t wait ’til Wednesday!”

Well, maybe. There’s no doubt that the past 23 months (hard to believe, but Jeb Bush started all this with a Facebook announcement in December 2014 that he was “actively exploring” a presidential run) have been a grind.

From Donald Trump opening his campaign last year with slurs on Mexican-Americans to WikiLeaks’ drip-drip-drip release of stolen email at the expense of Hillary Clinton, it was frequently ugly, sometimes outrageous and more often than we’d care to remember, simply shocking.

The harsh and unprecedented tenor of the campaign has been accompanied by a dramatic rise in the level of incivility among voters. Video footage at candidate rallies — well, one candidate’s rallies in particular — often featured coarse, profane language, symbols of hatred toward other Americans and the like.

That behavior was even more widespread on social media, where cowardly trolls find easy refuge behind self-aggrandizing names and avatars. We saw too many vicious fights break out on Facebook and comment walls, too many biting, personal slurs hurled on Twitter and more than a few people driven off social media entirely by the toxic atmosphere.

This exhausting election season isn’t something any of us can afford to just speed away from, shaking our head at the smoldering wreckage in the rear view.

None of those platforms, none of that language and none of those underlying attitudes, by the way, go away Wednesday morning. No matter who wins the White House or who is elected to any of the many other offices we’ll see today on our ballots, we still must find a way to live with one another.

And if we truly care about many of the issues that drove passions so feverishly high in this election season — our economy, national security, jobs, health care, immigration reform and more — then finding a way to live with one another is only a rudimentary first step. We must find common ground and learn how to join hands in work toward the common good.

Seen in that context, this exhausting election season isn’t something any of us can afford to just speed away from, shaking our head at the smoldering wreckage in the rear view. No, we all have important work to do — here in Hawaii as much as anywhere else in this country.

But that’s the intriguing promise of a participatory democracy, isn’t it? The idea that we argue like hell for months on end — in no small part, because we have the freedom to do so — and then have the opportunity to come together after the election, to make our government and our beloved country work.

If you haven’t taken advantage of absentee or early voting, get out there and cast your ballot today. From the presidential election to a mayor’s race and 20 charter amendments in Honolulu, a lot deserves your attention on this most special of days in our imperfect union, the work in progress that is the United States of America.

There is nothing else on your schedule more deserving of your time, no duty that merits any more of your attention than today’s democratic obligation.

Vote.