We hope that everyone who is eligible to vote today does so. Those who have already voted early at board of elections offices in Mahoning County or Trumbull County, or by mail, also should be commended.

It doesn’t matter if you voted a straight Democratic or Republican ticket. It doesn’t matter if you voted your conscience on each race, issue or levy.

No matter what any radio or television, commercial, columnist, editorial or election sign encourages you to do, ultimately all that is asked of United States citizens is that they do their civic duty on the first Tuesday in November every year and in the preceding primaries or any special elections that may come up.

If you do not vote, you probably shouldn’t complain about anything that happens at the local, state and federal levels afterward.

But there is one other thing that people definitely should not do during election season — steal or deface election signs.

The laws of Ohio and every other state spell it out clearly. You also may be familiar with the eighth of the Ten Commandments — “Thou shalt not steal.”

It doesn’t matter if your neighbor next door or across the street has a large Trump / Vance sign on his front lawn and it offends your sensibilities.

It doesn’t matter if someone on your street has a yard full of Harris / Walz signs and it annoys you.

It doesn’t matter if you’re determined to return Sherrod Brown to the U.S. Senate, but you keep seeing Bernie Moreno signs in your daily travels and they make you angry.

The only political signs that should concern you at all are those that you put up on your own property. Similarly, no functioning adult should need to creep into your yard under the cover of darkness to steal or vandalize your signs.

You’re welcome to live your life in the political echo chamber of your choosing if you must. But guess what? So is everyone else. And their echo chamber might be radically different than the one to which you are committed. That doesn’t mean you get to steal someone else’s property.

And yet, every year during election season, there are police reports filed about stolen or damaged signs.

The stakes seem even higher this year, given the tight presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and the hotly contested Senate race between Brown and Moreno. Signs are even being swiped or defaced for candidates farther down the ballot in the Mahoning Valley.

Grow up, people.

Voting is our civic duty. Stealing or defacing the property of others — regardless of how passionately you feel about a candidate, levy or issue — are criminal acts and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

And as Peter Falk’s “Columbo” used to say, “Just one more thing:”

Take those signs down after today. There was a time when candidates and citizens would do that automatically at the close of election season.

Why has that changed?