A yearly design competition for windshield decals sounds trivial on the face of it, but has caused a surprising amount of local ruckus in recent years due to some of the images selected. By appearing on around 150,000 vehicles in the D.C. area, the chosen graphic also contributes its bit to the public image of one of the Bluest counties in the Old Dominion. Participation in this little-publicized vote is usually quite limited, so just a few voters could make a difference to the outcome.
One neat thing is that we can vote online.
If you happen to live in Arlington County, Va., you have until Jan. 22 to weigh in on the decal we will all have to post on our windshields next November, proving that we paid a fee to the county. Also, if you don’t live here but know someone who does, you might care to pass this reminder along. It’s easy -- once you locate the site – but locating it isn’t so easy, perhaps! Details and instructions below. (You do have to be a county resident in order to vote.)
Background: Here in the county of Arlington we have to pay $33.00 annually to the county treasurer’s office for each vehicle, which buys us a decal to post on the windshield. The treasurer runs an annual decal design competition for high school students. The winner gets a small wad of scholarship money donated by a local business. The graphic has to show something in the county. A dozen or so people picked by the Treasurer’s office out of those who seem interested will sit down together one morning and go over all the entries. They choose their favorite four. County residents then get a chance to vote on the four. An announcement of the vote appears in our local “of record” newspaper, the SunGazette. Residents can vote online or by mailing the SunGazette. The results some out in late January.
Controversy: For a while this was a little noted and uncontroversial program. In 2004, however, the design chosen by this process turned out to be an image of the Pentagon including a quotation that was offensive on multiple levels. How the county staff and committee came to err that time is a mystery. The quote eventually became a non-issue. That portion of the design proved too fine-scale for clarity in printing a small decal and was removed. However, the controversy drew more attention to the choice of designs in general. Some noted a multiplicity of war-memorial and other military-related images on previous designs and yearned for something reflecting other aspects of county life. Others felt that these complainers were dissing the military. A few residents declined to sport the Pentagon image at all and sliced it out of the decal, leaving only the frame. At the same time, it was recognized that a fair number of votes on decal designs may have been coming from outside the county. The episode has led to a predictable yearly back-and-forth on the subject in letters to the editor. There is usually something for someone to complain about, whether it is the perennial military/civilian image discussion or scholarly debate about whether a graphic depicts something that is just inside or outside the county line!
This year: The four choices to vote on for the upcoming year include two different images of the memorial to the 9-11 Pentagon victims (day and night images), one image of the Arlington Air Force Memorial, and one night view of a Ferris wheel that was photographed at the Arlington County Fair. They were picked out of 36 entries in all, the SunGazette reports. The newspaper gave voting instruction but forgot to state the deadline: Jan. 22. Also, it’s not so easy to find the voting site. If you go to the main county site as listed by the newspaper
it’s not obvious where to click – the link is attached to one of five different graphics that scroll through a front-and-center box. Try going directly here.
Thanks and whatever you choose, the more Arlingtonians voting the better! BTW the voting system has been amended to make sure voters are county residents. So before casting a ballot, you are prompted to provide name and address.