Poster Is Used to Put a Face On Push for Voting Rights
Group Uses Poster Of Firefighters To Illustrate Issue

By Audrey Edwards
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 21, 2006

At first glance, nothing visibly differentiates the two District firefighters who look out from a new poster going up around town.

But in red letters placed below their boots, Larry Chapman is identified as a District resident and Jayme Heflin as a Marylander.

"Only one has a vote in Congress," says the poster, which is the opening salvo in a campaign by the advocacy group DC Vote to draw attention to the District's special status and lack of voting rights.

Over the next week, the likenesses of Chapman and Heflin will be placed in Metro stations and bus shelters.

Ilir Zherka, executive director of DC Vote, said firefighters were chosen to dramatize the voting issue because their profession saves lives and helps people.

"They both work in the District but get treated differently because of where they live," he said. "It's an absurd distinction."

Zherka and D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) presented the poster at a bus shelter at 10th Street and Independence Avenue in Southwest Washington.

DC Vote estimates that at least 150,000 people a day will see the posters at the four bus shelters and three Metro stations where they will be placed.

Posters have gone up at a bus shelter on North Capitol Street and two shelters on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Union Station, Smithsonian and Capitol South Metro stations will have the posters by Tuesday.

The posters cost about $98,000 to place and are paid for out of a $500,000 grant awarded by Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) and the council, DC Vote said.

Zherka said similar TV and radio ads are expected to start in September. The campaign will run until April, he said.

A national survey last year for DC Vote found that 78 percent of respondents think D.C. residents have voting rights in Congress like those of residents in the 50 states. About 82 percent in the poll endorsed the principle that District residents should have voting rights.

The posters target visitors to the nation's capital from across the country. Evans said the locations were chosen because many tourists frequent them.

"We want to educate these individuals so they will go back and tell their congressional representative that they need to right the situation," he said.