Capital Commentary: VOTE!

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After a seemingly endless campaign, Election Day is less than a week away. Of course, millions of voters will exercise their right to vote beforehand via early voting, absentee voting or vote-by-mail options.

For perhaps the first time, Capital Commentary will hit the pause button on housing policy topics.

But it will spotlight a home. And a message:

• Vote. Vote like your country depends on it. Because it does.

Read on to see how to win a flag flown over the U.S. Capitol just for exercising your franchise.

1. Big Thing: The House That Built Me

With apologies to Miranda Lambert, I’d like to invite the reader to return with me to 615 Patricia Avenue in Bakersfield, California, my boyhood home.

Why it matters: There might not be any of my handprints on the steps, but the home in the photo above figures prominently in the steps I took to become an advocate in the housing finance industry.

• It’s where I first saw democracy in action — and witnessed it again and again every two years. It is where I learned that the country’s future is decided by ordinary Americans, not politicos in smoke-filled rooms.

The big picture: I owe much of my passion for politics to my mother, a precinct captain with the Kern County Elections Division, responsible for overseeing free and fair elections.

• She took her job seriously and wanted her family to share her patriotism. So, she chose to host an official polling place in the living room of our small, one-story ranch-style home.

Everyone in the family had an early morning role to play on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

• Older brothers and my father moved couches and chairs so the polling booths and registrar tables would fit.
• My sister helped organize the voter rolls that would be crosschecked by the election workers.

I walked 300 feet in both directions from our driveway to plant signs warning against “electioneering” any closer to the polling station.

Exactly at 7 a.m., my mother would step outside our front door to exclaim, “Hear ye, hear ye, the polls are now open.” Neighbors, queued up in anticipation of her announcement, poured into our house.

The bottom line: From that point, only election integrity mattered.

• Our lone TV, a black-and-white Zenith, stood unplugged, like a silent sentry protecting voters from being influenced by last-minute campaign commercials that might sway their decisions.
• After school, I holed up in my bedroom quietly listening on my avocado green transistor radio for election results from the East, careful to keep the information to myself. (Yes, I was a political junkie from a young age.)

Twelve hours after opening the voting site, my mom proclaimed, “Hear ye, hear ye, the polls are closed,” and life began to return to normal.

• Only the election officials remained, carefully comparing the number of ballots to the count of voters. The ballots were then boxed, locked and carted to the County Board of Elections for safekeeping.

Our thought bubble: There is nothing more precious nor empowering as exercising our right to vote, a lesson that sticks with me more than half a century after seeing it firsthand.

• Voting-age population turnout for the 2020 presidential election — 62.8% — was the highest since 1900, according to Pew Research. That sounds admirable, but it also means nearly four in 10 people of voting age didn’t cast a ballot.
• It places the U.S. just 31st among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries. So, perhaps not so admirable after all.

This is a big election. Take a memory from the house that built me: go vote.

2. Capture the Flag

Capital Commentary is awarding five U.S. flags flown over the U.S. Capitol to readers who submit a photo of them wearing an “I voted” sticker.

We call it “Vote, Snap, Win.”

Snap a selfie while wearing the I Have Voted sticker and email it to me (click the button below) and you will be entered into a random drawing for the flags.