I had my pickup’s annual state inspection done here in Maine the other day (and it passed). After I got home, I noticed something new this year. If you’re close enough, you can see the word VOID several times in white letters over the front of the sticker, but it’s not very noticeable. Parts of most of the letters don’t show up at all, as if it were a bad printing job. What’s the deal? Is it supposed to change color after about a year (when it expires) or what? How does it work?
That seems odd to me…aren’t these stickers simply indicative of the date of exipry to begin with, and so anyone who knows the current date should know whether its passed or not? If it was something designed to change colour or become more visible, I would think it would be some sort of photchemical reaction, however how that could compensate for vehicles kept in indoor parking lots/unlit garages/outdoors all the time/in another, sunnier state for half the year, etc, I don’t know.
Have you asked the state department where you obtained the sticker? They might know. As for me, I have Quebec plates and so no more stickers, so I can’t tell you if ours are the same or not!
Seems like that “void” will come up if the sticker is tampered with. It looks like a hologram, huh? My Mississippi sticker does not have that.
(it’s hard enough getting it to stick to the mule !!!)
The words are probably the anti-theft protection on the sticker.
Normally, you’re not supposed to be able to see it, but if you peel the sticker off of the windshield, bits of the sticker’s backing will tear loose, and the words “VOID VOID VOID” will be clearly seen on the pilfered sticker.
-David
I wonder if whoever applied the sticker had it misaligned, and tried to re-afix it. Peeling off a tamper indicating sticker can show the “void” lettering you’re talking about, and if it was a bad application job or a partial peel, that could be why you’re seeing partial letters and the like.
I live in O-HI-O. What is the “vehicle inspection sticker” of which you speak? 
Some states require an inspection that checks for anything from basic roadworthiness and saftey, to the emissions content of the car’s exhaust. The inspecting agency then places a sticker in a certain corner of the windshield, showing when the next inspection is due.
If you’re pulled over for a routine traffic stop, and the officer notices that you’re past due, it’s another thing they can ticket you for.
SC_Wolf Sorry to pull you leg. I grew up in Arlington Virginia and had to get them in the 1960’s.
My current state, Ohio, is mired in the 19th century when it come to…er, uh,…just about everything in life.
South Carolina used to require inspections, but they stopped a while back. Not that it matters much, because as far as I can tell, it didn’t involve more than seeing that all the turn indicators and brake indicators would light properly.
I believe Ohio used to require them. I seem to remember them from my childhood. Maybe I’m misremembering something else…
Well, huh. Google, “maine vehicle inspection stickers”.
www.theunionleader.com/articles_show.html%3Farticle%3D3763]Cached.
So maybe it’s a bad batch of stickers? Does it look like it isn’t stuck right?
Dang. still didn’t make.
Well, here it is, somebody else can fiddle with it.
So now we know that there are bad stickers in Hew Hampshire. They were printed by a company in Maine.
Who printed bib’s sticker?
Are the words reflective, or distinct from the rest of the printing in some way? Maybe they’re trying to prevent people from copying the tags, like the faint patterns on some checks that say “VOID” when you photocopy them.
Thanks, all. The tamper-proof/anti-theft feature makes sense to me now that you mention it. I can’t tell for sure if the sticker was misaligned and reapplied, but it’s certainly possible.
My original hypothesis, in case it didn’t make sense, was that the writing might change to orange or some other bright color that the police could see from a distance. That seems less likely now.
t’s not a hologram, just white lettering. It doesn’t say who printed the sticker.
The actual inspection and stickering is done by private auto mechanics. The inspection program seems to be administered by the the Department of Public Safety.
I know the old MA stickers definetly read “VOID VOID VOID” if you peeled them off and re-applied them. If you got a new windshield, you’d get a backing sticker that sayd “Windshield Replacement”, to put behind your "VOID VOID VOID"ed inspection sticker.
I’m 99% sure that’s the case with your sticker, as well. You can see it, if you really look, but usually it’s not that obvious.
I was working in a state lab that did quality monitoring on those tamper-proof stickers when they were first being used, and I remember that they really had a hard time getting them to work right at first. It’s intended to make the sticker say “VOID” all over it when you pull it off the glass so that people can’t steal them from other people’s cars. It’s apparently not easy to get the adhesive to stay there perfectly for a year and peel off when you want it to and put the “VOID” pattern in the sticker when it comes off.
Whatever vendor was selling us the stickers (it might have been 3-M, but I’m not sure) would let us take samples at intervals for testing so we could try to make sure they would work right. We would put sample stickers on a piece of glass and then put them in a machine called a Weather-O-Meter to artificially weather them for a certain amount of time to make sure they could withstand sunlight and temperature changes, then we’d pull them off the glass to make sure they came off cleanly and voided like they were supposed to.
I wasn’t directly involved in testing those things (although I did get to spend countless backbreaking hours scraping carcinogenic crud generated by the W-O-M’s carbon arc electrodes off the inside of the damn thing, which had to be done every single day), but from what I remember we had some problems with them despite all the testing.
Here in Texas both the inspection and registration stickers are supposed to say “VOID” if removed. However the guy who installed a new windshield on my car had no problems removing them without the void showing just using a regular razor blade. On the other hand, the stickers here don’t fall off after a few months, so I guess it’s a case of “you can’t have it all”. 
/Markus
If I recall correctly, they’re only supposed to void when they’re peeled off, not razored off. The test we did on them involved peeling, anyway.