Nebraska's License Plates: YOU DECIDE

[RoadRage]

Poll question: Nebraska's License Plates: YOU DECIDE

So, the state let Nebraskans vote for one of 4 ugly finalists for our new License Plate.. and the website collegehumor.com hijacked the voting - so now the original winning plate is being recalled and is being replaced with (IMO) is an even UGLIER Plate. The story and pictures of the plates are below. Now you get to vote too - in a DU Poll!



LINCOLN - Nebraska is throwing out the new license plate design announced earlier this week, instead declaring the one featuring the state bird and state flower the actual winner.

State officials said Friday that the original selection was based on a public Internet vote that, a new review shows, had been skewed by a web site's prank. The review of the voting results was prompted by a request from The World-Herald for the raw data to see if the web site www.collegehumor.com had succeeded in hijacking the vote.

Thursday night, Beverly Neth, the state's motor vehicles director, said the voting patterns raised "some real questions and real concern." At a press conference Friday, Neth said: "I now have new evidence that shows it is clear that the site's malicious intent was realized. I am taking responsibility for this situation, and I am here today to make this right."

State officials said the state's webmaster, Nebraska Interactive, was able to pinpoint the votes that came through CollegeHumor.com and Neth disqualified those votes. The humor web site encouraged people to vote for what it called the most boring design. That design, which was black, white and red with the Nebraska.gov Web address, was announced by Gov. Dave Heineman as the winner Tuesday.

In the face of new information, administration officials backed off previous statements that the votes linking off the CollegeHumor.com site were "spread evenly'' among the four plate options, thus rendering the prank moot. That information had come from an employee of Nebraska Interactive, the private company that manages Nebraska.gov, the state Web site, Neth said.

At the Friday press conference, Brent Hoffman, general manager for Nebraska Interactive, said the information provided to state officials was not true and that the company had not actually monitored the vote totals each day. "I want to offer my apology to Beverly Neth, Gov. Heineman and Nebraskans across the state for Nebraska.gov's role in this situation," he said.

Neth checked the vote total three times during the two-week voting period but did not catch the spike in votes for the black, white and red plate on May 7 and 8. The CollegeHumor.com link went up on May 7. The new review of voting patterns showed that devotees of the College Humor site contributed 14,805 votes to the total. Those votes went overwhelmingly to the plate that the site had described as the most boring.

When those votes were removed from the total, the black, white and red plate fell to number two in the voting.

The meadowlark plate received 32,727 votes. The black, white and red plate got 28,302 votes. The one with the Capitol got 26,107 votes and the blue plate with the state outline got 6,622 votes.

Kevin Corrigan, the CollegeHumor.com editor who instigated the prank, said Thursday that he has no doubt the site influenced the vote. "Our site did cause it to win,'' he said.

Thursday's events marked a dramatic turn in a surreal - and, at times, comic - license plate debate that has raged across the state for much of this month. It has all underscored how much those thin pieces of metal we bolt to our cars touch a nerve with Nebraskans.

Many Nebraskans were critical of all four proposed designs when they were unveiled May 4, and a leading advertising executive called them "embarrassing.'' Still, Heineman proceeded, noting that plates are a law-enforcement tool. More at LINK

Original Winning Plate (voted on by collegehumor.com):




New Winning Plate (uglier then the first in my opinion):




And, THIS is the best site of all - completely making fun of the stupid plate in the first place. I have two submissions on here myself!

So which one would you have voted for?