NORWAY, Maine — For the second time in two years, a Maine woman says she’s received a ticket for not paying a toll from a state where she’s never been.
Karri White always thought her license plate was unique.
“I don’t know how many other ones there are, I don’t know,” White said.
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The confusion came Monday when she received a bill for a toll in Virginia.
“You can’t even make out the license plate number on it,” White said.
The problem is that she’s never been over the Dominion Bridge in her life.
“I was just, aggravated all over again,” White said. “I feel like it just brought up feelings of frustration and, something has to change for people, I know I can’t be the only person going through this.”
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CBS 13 first met Karri back in 2017, when she got a similar bill from Maryland, also not hers.
Now two years later, that same plate isn’t even on her car anymore.
“We haven’t had these license plates registered on any vehicle for the last six months,” White said.
But with more than 50 styles of license plates in Maine, many overlap, raising confusion over which car is which.
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The Secretary of State says there’s tens of thousands of license plates in Maine, with the same number but in different styles. But when other states go and look them up, usually all the shows up is our famous chickadee.
“It’s gotten less frequent over the years, and this is something that happened organically. I don’t think anyone realized we were building problems,” Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said.
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Maine no longer allows duplicate numbers on different plates, but plenty are still out there.
“The ones that have them, can keep them,” Dunlap said.
The city of Chesapeake, Virginia says they now believe their system confused Karri White’s plate with another Maine plate, and after a call from CBS 13, they’ve since canceled her bill, but White still feels there’s a bigger problem.
“This has got to be affecting people not only here in Maine but across the country,” White said.