Texans Continue to Go Crazy Over License Plate Design

By Steve Delahoyde on February 13, 2008 11:00 AM

Next up on this writer’s day of mildly-interesting fluff, we once again return to the great state of Texas (who should vote for the presidential candidate we like) to fill you in on a story we’d briefly had some laughs about a while back: the unforeseen, massive interest in state residents being allowed to vote for a new license plate design. As you might remember, Texans went nuts when five potential plates were unveiled online, repeatedly crashing servers and, in general, making state administrative duties a little tricky for a month. Well, after the 1.2 million votes had been tallied, they’ve finally picked their favorite, “a plate featuring a big open sky and rolling hills.” But no, the story doesn’t end there. Once the new, winning plate had been announced, the Texas Department of Transportation started getting hounded by drivers who wanted to make sure the plates for pickup trucks still would say “Texas Truck” somewhere on them, because apparently that’s incredibly important.

A new license plate design will keep that iconic label intact, a spokeswoman with the Texas Department of Transportation said Tuesday.

Department spokeswoman Kim Sue Lia Perkes said the department will retain that particular label for drivers of those vehicles.

“No, we’re not taking away the ‘truck’ plate. There will be a version that has ‘truck’ on it,” Perkes said.

Our suggestion for Texas for the next time they redesign their plates is to just take out all the words that are on there now and replace them with one line: “Texas: We Like License Plates.” And our suggestion to our favorite presidential candidate when they head down there soon is to start every stump speech with, “You know, I think a license plate says a lot about a state…” That’s sure to clinch the primary.

Comments