Methods and systems for automatically determining the issuing state of a license plate. An image of a license plate acquired by an ALPR engine can be processed via one or more OCR engines such that each OCR engine among the OCR engines is tuned to a particular state. Confidence data output from the OCR engine(s) can be analyzed (among other factors) to estimate the issuing state associated with the license plate. Multiple observations related to the issuing state can be merged to derive an overall conclusion and assign an associated confidence value with respect to the confidence data and determine a likely issuing state associated with the license plate.