Nebraska thwarts pranksters' license plate hijacking

LINCOLN, Neb. -- Nebraska on Friday threw out thousands of votes -- online votes for its new license plate -- after discovering that a minimalist approach initially won only because a humor website had urged people to choose the most boring design.

Department of Motor Vehicles director Beverly Neth announced Friday that a white, gold and black plate featuring the state bird and state flower -- the western meadowlark and goldenrod -- is the actual winner of online voting. The new plates go into use in 2011.

The winner announced Tuesday had been a black-and-white plate with the URL of Nebraska's Web site in red. But those results were skewed by a prank instigated by collegehumor.com, which encouraged people to vote for what it deemed to be the most boring design.

Gov. Dave Heineman's spokeswoman, Jen Rae Hein, said the black-and-white plate generated 12,510 of the 14,805 votes cast through collegehumor.com's link to the Nebraska DMV voting site.

After Neth disqualified the humor site's votes, the bird-and-flower design became the winner with 32,858 votes.

This design for the state's new license plate was chosen by online votes because of a prank.

The black-and-white plate managed to place second among four entries, less than 5,000 votes behind.