New Montana Driver's Licenses

An Ugly Answer to Real ID

By Kellyn Brown, 6-11-08

The state unveiled its new driver’s license design this week. It includes a hot-pink sky, trio of grizzlies and 1970s-era disco font that will undoubtedly help prove which Montana motorists are terrorists and which are not. This is our elected officials’ answer to complying with the federal Real ID law that asked each state to abide by a variety of Homeland Security anti-fraud measures. We opted to ignore the feds, and came up with our own solution – an ugly one to boot.

Beacon designer Stephen Templeton, upon studying the new design, quipped, “You have to go out of your way to be that bad.” And maybe that’s point – that the license is so ghastly that no one could ever replicate it. There is so much happening on the new Montana driver’s license, I reckon fake ID production in the state will slow considerably once the new ones are issued. The proliferation of underage keggers should slow soon thereafter. But that’s not why we made the change.

Instead, it was in response to perceived and real federal bullying. Montana was one of a handful of states that shunned the Real ID requirements, arguing that they were impractical, too expensive and an invasion of privacy. It all smelled a bit like a socialist plot, so we followed the rules by making our own. In short, we’re hoping to make the feds’ plan obsolete by throwing the kitchen sink at forgery. After all, our new license shows a miner’s pick under ultraviolet light and an outline of Sacagawea under concentrated light. Impressive.

It would take someone with a doctorate in design to even consider replicating our new license. And with Homeland Security’s track record, I doubt that agency will come up with anything better. It may, however, have required the state to use less pink. [End of article]

Comment By valley_dude, 6-12-08

“It would take someone with a doctorate in design to even consider replicating our new license”

Ignorance is sometimes a blessing… I am not in favor of the Real ID, however you might be surprised what people can do with the technology available today. Hologram, silk screening, laminating machines and magnetic strip programming devices that are readily available on the internet make such tasks simple. Opps, I said the “I” word, maybe since your columns are carried on the ‘net’ you should do a little research… also, there are many gifted designers in the valley, and tossing names around such as “Stephen Templeton” carry little weight with them, just one man’s opinion. Guess it was a slow news day, hehehe.

Comment By mcluvin, 6-12-08

Just as there are “many gifted designers” in the Flathead, so too are there many who should not comment.
It’s not that it can’t be replicated. And certainly, it’s not that anyone possessing the skill set or tools to do so won’t try. Simply put, the new license is so jumbled, so downright ugly, that if anyone were to try and reproduce it they would die of an acute exposure to WHO CARES.
Really? Would the blog have been better had it talked about how quickly some “Johnny Derelict” was going to reproduce it? I think what the good Brown meant was, “We done good wit the new beer-getter.”
Granted, his blogs usually are better. Also, I’m glad that we are only talking about throwing “Temp’s” name around, not his actual person. Dude is big.

This article was printed from flatheadbeacon.com at the following URL: http://www.flatheadbeacon.com/articles/article/an_ugly_answer_to_real_id/3874/