North Four Corners News ♦ April 2024

Maryland Has the Most License Plate Designs in U.S.

By Jacquie Bokow

According to the 8 October 2023 “Department of Data” column in The Washington Post, Maryland offers 989 different license plate designs, twice as many as next two states — Texas and Pennsylvania.  The most popular is the “Chesapeake Bay” plate, but conservation-themed plates are best-sellers in every state.  Maryland accounts for about one of every eight of the 8,331 different plates listed on state sites.  The data was collected by Jon Keegan, an investigative data reporter at the Markup.

Every state has plates devoted to military veterans; almost all have special plates for folks with disabilities, too.

“Why does Maryland — which is not the most populous state, or even the 17th-most-populous state — offer such a plate buffet?” asks DOD author Andrew Van Dam.  “One clue,” he writes, “is that many of the state’s plates are organization-specific.”  Some of the groups he mentions are the Baltimore Rock Opera Society or the Frederick Saltwater Anglers.  You can scroll through hundreds of these online at the link below.

Maryland License Plates

According to state law, anyone can apply for a specialty plate as long as they get 25 organization members in Maryland to order it beforehand.  Some organizations have only a few car owners using their designs; in the past five years only one each has been sold for the American Sewing Guild, the Ocean City Parrothead Club, and the Maryland Republican Party.   ■