When Thomas Hays applied for his passport in February, he wasn’t expecting any trouble. Then the U.S. Department of State sent him a letter.

Dispatched on Feb. 27, the letter thanked Hays for his application, but noted that, unfortunately, the identification he provided was insufficient. To “further establish [his] identity,” he was asked to submit additional documentation that had been issued prior to 1997. The government gave him 30 days.

Thomas Hays wonders if his political views, typified by the Replacement Needed posters he helped create, have slowed the receipt of his passport.

“They wanted employment records, tax records, all my earning statements,” says Hays. “They wanted everything.”

A student at Evergreen State College, Hays scrambled to find the required records. Receiving the passport is essential for two college-approved trips Hays has scheduled: the first, detailing the response of peaceful protestors to protective forces at the G8 Summit, slated for June 6-8 in Germany; the second, traveling around Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, documenting how the region’s poor are effected by G8 policies.

With the fate of a bachelor’s degree hanging in the balance, Hays returned the requested information by the March 27 deadline. As of May 7, he was still waiting for his passport.

“Allegedly,” says Hays, “it’s on its way.”

It’s easy to chalk up his waylaid blue billfold to the massive delays in the issuance of new passports that have thousands of would-be travelers fretting. But Hays points to another cause. “I think the posters had a lot to do with it,” he says.

Ah, yes: the posters.

Part of a visual campaign called Replacements Needed, the posters feature arresting, at times gruesome, imagery of the War in Iraq. Placed beneath a photo that changes every week, white text provides a running tally of dead U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. (The most recent poster laments 3,357 American deaths and “723,796+” Iraqi.)

The Replacements Needed campaign, says Hays, was the collective brainchild of a number of people sitting around a Capitol Hill apartment in April 2004. The posters were slapped onto telephones poles. “And much to our surprise,” says Hays, “they caught on.”

And from some quarters, Hays caught hell. Some on Capitol Hill maintained the posters amounted to visual clutter. In late 2005, an email sent to the state Department of Transportation claimed the posters were adhered with glue, an illegal act. But Hays says he never put those posters up, and that it was probably done by people who’d downloaded them from www.replacementsneeded.com.

Unease generated by the posters may have spread from one Capitol Hill to another. A summer 2005 Replacements Needed exhibit at Seattle’s Museum of the Mysteries led Hays to come up with an idea: Why not mail postcards promoting the show to every member of Congress? Even though no Congressional reps attended, he’s pretty sure the invitations garnered some attention. “It doesn’t make it to that level without someone in the State Department noticing,” Hays says.

State Department spokesperson Leslie Phillips asserts Hays’ beliefs are not the cause of the red tape. “Absolutely not,” she says. Phillips says there are laws pertaining to the adjudication of passports and, without a liability waiver, she’s unable to talk about the specifics of any individual case.

Hays says he’s hoping the State Department notices he’s sent in all that’s been asked of him, and posts his passport before May 28, the date of his non-refundable airline ticket. While he’s still hopeful, he says that tracking down the added documentation and obtaining a lawyer have drained his funds to such a degree, he doesn’t know if he can afford the trips. He says friends are considering throwing him a benefit.

But no matter the cause of his passport delay, Hays says he’s committed to Replacements Needed. “We’ve got to do more than just sit on our couch and take bong hits and bitch about [the war],” says Hays. “That’s not changing anything.”