{"id":11812,"date":"2020-01-24T10:00:31","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T16:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=11812"},"modified":"2020-01-24T00:05:47","modified_gmt":"2020-01-24T06:05:47","slug":"legislature-tries-to-circumvent-will-of-the-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2020\/01\/legislature-tries-to-circumvent-will-of-the-voters\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislature tries to circumvent will of the voters"},"content":{"rendered":"

OH COME ON.<\/em><\/p>\n

Of all the things that Iowans can’t find agreement on, “license plates” probably wasn’t on the list a decade ago.<\/p>\n

In 2017, the state offered voters three choices for a new license plate. A reworked version of the 1997 design, with a somewhat garish green stripe, won a plurality of the nearly 300,000 votes cast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And a notable percentage of Iowans hate it. They hate it so much that they would buy\u00a0specialty color plates from a tiny college<\/a> in northwest Iowa so it wasn’t on their vehicles. They hate it so much that the Iowa Legislature wedged in a section in a bill<\/a> allowing “blackout” plates, with white on black letters, to become an official design available for a fee.<\/p>\n

They hate the standard plate so much that multiple counties sold out of their stock of blackout plates<\/a> in less than three months. They\u00a0hate, hate, HATE it so much that the blackout plate is now the most popular specialty plate in the state<\/a>. WHO Radio says<\/a> that 94% of Iowa’s license plates sold are still the standard ones, but that seems destined to drop.<\/p>\n

Iowans hate the standard license plate so much that nearly an entire quarter of the House<\/em> is supporting a bill to make one of the plates that LOST<\/strong><\/em> the vote<\/a>, in an entirely different color scheme, available in the same manner as the blackout plates. Should this pass, that would make FIVE main varieties of Iowa license plates: 1997 (well, 2012 black alphanumeric) and 2017 series, each with various decal options; the yellow-background college plates with black\/red\/purple print; the blackout plates; and this “Flying Our Colors” plate<\/a> that turns the Iowa flag on its side. Line them up and you could think they’re from five different states.<\/p>\n

Maybe Bernie Sanders is right<\/a>, that there is such a thing as too many choices. That, or some things are just too important to be left to democracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OH COME ON. Of all the things that Iowans can’t find agreement on, “license plates” probably wasn’t on the list a decade ago. In 2017, the state offered voters three choices for a new license plate. A reworked version of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-license-plates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11812"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11815,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11812\/revisions\/11815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}