It’s that time of the year, the time when I need to renew my registration for my old reliable Jeep. It’s something everyone with a vehicle must do, and in Wisconsin, we must do it every year.

When I was living in Arizona, we had the option to do it every two years, which I did. Depending on the emission standards, you could renew your vehicle for a five-year period. That’s why it sometimes baffles me why the registration process in Wisconsin requires doing it every year. Wouldn’t it be easier to pay for two years or more of registering the vehicle, thus eliminating doing the same thing every 12 months?

Of course, that beef is small potatoes, so to speak, compared with one other oddity—the little year tag that goes on the license plate. Once you get it, you stick it on top of the previous years. I just placed my ninth tag on my license plate.

You might be wondering why I think this is so odd. It comes down to technology. In the time before computerized everything, the tag was in place to verify that your vehicle registration was current.

Nowadays, though, everything is digitally recorded on some cloud somewhere. Once I insert my payment information and hit the button to send everything off to the Department of Motorized Vehicles, I’m all set for another year.

In the event I’m pulled over by law enforcement, when they’re checking to see if my driver’s license is in good standing and whether I have vehicle insurance, they have access to the records that confirm whether my vehicle is registered or if I’ve let it lapse, so why is there still a need for the DMV to mail me another colored tag? It seems like an expense that is no longer necessary in a world where everything is in a data buffer.

Think about it for a minute. When we purchase items online, we receive emails confirming our order has been placed with payment in full. Even purchasing items in person today doesn’t require a physical receipt or indicator that I’ve purchased or renewed something. Some stores provide the option of emailing or texting me proof of what I’ve done.

My insurance, which recently came due, was all done online, and I’m given the option to print out or receive cards but I usually don’t because I can access the information through my phone. The officer sees it, and he/she realizes I’m not driving without insurance. No fuss, no muss.

The ironic thing is that, if you don’t put the tag on the license plate, you can still be fined—even if you’ve gone to the time and expense to renew your registration ahead of time. It boggles the mind.

I think it’s an unnecessary holdout as we attempt to become a paperless society. Unless Armageddon comes and wipes out all the computers in the world, it seems unnecessary to put a sticky tag on your vehicle. Of course, Armageddon would likely mean the end of civilization, which means either you’re dead and don’t care, or you survive in a world where there’s no longer any rules.

When you think about it, other DMV procedures are simplified. Take the renewal of driver’s licenses, for example. It used to be that you had to retake a driving test every few years to prove you were still competent to drive. Now the law allows you to simply renew the process online, unless you’re over 65. In Wisconsin, it’s every eight years, while it’s every 12 in Arizona. I bring this up because I was just emailed that my license renewal is coming up.

While one could argue that a digital society has too much information on our lives, doing away with physical tags for license plates doesn’t seem like a slippery slope. We pay the fee. We hit the road. If the police pull us over, they’re looking up whether we’re current on our license and whether we have any outstanding warrants for murder or parking tickets or overdue library books.

Okay, maybe not that last one.

Since I’m updated on my vehicle registration, I guess I’ll hit the road, see what other wonders are out there and likely forget the notion that vehicle tags are passe. Still, it’s something to think about.