Georgia motorists will be getting newly designed license plates soon but anyone who expected it to come pre-printed with "In God We Trust" is out of luck and out $1 if they still want the phrase on their plate.
Gov. Nathan Deal will unveil the new plate Friday at a Capitol news conference to end what had started as a simple contest but has become a more controversial-than-necessary process.
The dust-up began in May, when the Department of Revenue, which administers the tag program, launched a public contest to design the new plate and provided a template for would-be artists. In June, the department released eight semifinalists and encouraged the public to vote for their favorite on the agency's website.
But there was a twist: Three of the eight designs featured "In God We Trust" in the space where a county's name most often goes. When asked for clarification, the Department of Revenue said the design was simply showing how the plate would look with the IGWT sticker that is already available to anyone for a $1 charge.
But the department's press release never mentioned that, leading groups as disparate as survivalists to atheists to protest that the next Georgia license plate might come pre-printed with "In God We Trust" on it. It also dredged up long-simmering resentments on each side.
A church in Statesboro urged followers to go to the state website and vote for one of the plates featuring IGWT. Readers of a website devoted to preparing for the collapse of American society were also encouraged to vote for the IGTW plates.
"I posted this on the Georgia Forum but I would also appreciate any national help that we can get," a commenter on the American Preppers Network message board wrote. "In case you haven't seen this, now is your chance. Although there may be an unseen mechanism to cut out duplicate votes, it seemed to let me vote twice -- designed by Democrats I suppose."
More than 400,000 votes were cast and this week, Revenue revealed the three finalists -- all of which feature IGWT. Again, the agency did not explain that the phrase won't be pre-printed on all plates. An agency spokesman would not say how many votes each design received. But at some point, a message must have gotten through. The proposed designs on the department's website no longer show IGWT.
The tift has, however, gotten individuals on opposite sides of the issue to agree on one thing: The Department of Revenue should have done a better job communicating its proposal.
Hemant Mehta, an Atlanta atheist who runs the "Friendly Atheist" website, said the department's failure to communicate appeared intentional.
"It seemed like state officials were using a ‘bat signal' to get people to vote for those [plates with IGWT] and they clearly did," he said. "This is a problem of their own making."
Mehta also doesn't object to the state selling the IGWT stickers at local tag offices, although he believes other stickers ought to be available, too. The American Humanist Association agrees and on Thursday called on the state to also offer a sticker that says "E Pluribus Unum," the Latin phrase meaning "Out of Many, One," the original U.S. motto.
On the other side, Kay Godwin of Blackshear, a Republican activist with close ties to Christian evangelicals, already has the IGWT sticker on her license plate. She wasn't aware of the tag dispute but was dismayed when told.
"That is typical government lack of communication, causing an issue that need not ever been," Godwin said.
Yet it could have been worse. A website for gun enthusiasts had urged its readers to vote for a different plate and for a different reason. One poster on the message board said the peach in this particular plate design looked like a horse's behind.
"If we win, everybody in Georgia state will be driving with horse's [rear] license plate," he wrote.
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