Last Sunday morning when I went out to walk the dog, I noticed a card on the windshield of my wife’s car. She had been shopping with the girls the day before at Freehold Raceway Mall. The card said the car’s registration had expired and a summons had been issued.

That had me scratching my head. My wife’s 2012 Honda Accord is leased. And typically when you lease a car, you automatically get a registration that runs for four years.

On Monday, I called the people at Honda. They informed me that the dealer had installed the plates from my prior three-year Accord lease, so I could take advantage of the fourth year of registration. That was nice. But when the registration ran out, the state was supposed to send Honda a renewal application. The people at Honda told me they never received it.

I believed them, and for a simple reason: If there is a mistake to be made, the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission will make it. I found that out when I went to renew the registration in person. The nice lady behind the counter informed me that I couldn’t renew because I had surrendered my plates.

That again had me scratching my head. If I had turned in my plates, then just why the heck would I be ready to write her a check for $59 to renew a registration that I couldn’t use?

I asked the lady to check the computer and remedy the error. That was impossible, she said. She handed me two sheets of paper and told me to come back with a pencil-tracing of my plates.

It was getting late, and I had to drive up north to watch Gov. Chris Christie debate state Sen. Barbara Buono. I suspect Buono would have won the debate — and the election — if she had simply asked the governor why his administration can’t handle something as simple as a registration renewal. A lawyer friend of mine tells me that the courts are clogged with such cases, almost all of which could be prevented if the state would simply run its motor vehicle system the way a company like Amazon runs its website.

Alas, Buono did not broach the subject, perhaps because the Democrats are equally complicit in this conspiracy against the motorist.

It was past midnight when I got home. After enduring the debate, all I wanted was a cold beer followed by a warm bed. But first I had to find a pencil — a device invented five centuries before the computer, by the way. I then had to kneel down in the dark, rubbing this obsolete device across the plate repeatedly to tell the state what it already knew. I got ticked off.

I got even more ticked off the next day when I called Dave Jones. Jones recently retired from the State Police, but for years he was the spokesman for the State Police Fraternal Association (not FOP, as a reader noted) unit. In that capacity, he often complained about policies that make the police "sing for their supper" — i.e., hand out enough tickets to cover their salaries.

This was a classic case of that abuse, Jones said. The original purpose of license-plate scanners was to find stolen cars in high-crime areas such as Newark and Camden. But before long, local officials realized they could make a quick buck by having their cops drive around scanning plates and handing out tickets.

"I call it ‘mayor’s methadone,Â" Jones said. "They’re hooked on the money."

What Jones told me next was news to me — frightening news. Under the guise of homeland security, license-plate readers had been installed over every entrance to Freehold Raceway Mall, he said.

I had to see this for myself, so I hung up and drove to Freehold. Sure enough, over every entrance to the mall were scanners that record the plate numbers of every car coming and going. The scan instantly shows whether the registration is current, Jones said. While the driver is shopping, the police are writing out a ticket. The project was funded with a $285,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

"Of all the places that need readers, you stick them in the Freehold Mall?" Jones said. "Name one case where a terrorist used their own vehicle."

I can’t think of one. But if some madman from the Middle East ever does decide to hit Freehold Raceway Mall, he’ll face the combined might of both the Motor Vehicle Commission and the Department of Homeland Security. First, MVC will screw up his registration renewal. And then the cops will leave a card on his windshield.

Before long, al Qaeda will be brought to its knees, tracing license plates with pencils.

It's a shame we Americans have to resort to such harsh measures. But unless we show firm resolve on registration renewals, the terrorists will have won.

COMMENTS -NO MORE CLUELESS LIBERALS PLEASE: I noticed that in the comments section I'm hearing from various clueless liberals who fail to understand the argument I'm making here. Yes, we all know the state insists it is the responsibility of the owner of the vehicle, in this case Honda, to keep the registration up to date.

Here is the point of the column: I reject that argument. I believe the state should modernize the system because the state exists to serve the citizen, not the other way around.

If you are a liberal who believes it is the citizen's responsibility to serve the state, there are plenty of blogs for you. Please comment on them, not here.

By the way, the person leasing a vehicle not only doesn't have the responsibility to renew the lease; he doesn't even have the authority. That's up to the lessor. As I noted, the summons went to Honda for that reason. It will be up to Honda whether to contest it based on the state's abject incompetence. The Honda people tell me they get thousands of these printed forms every month from New Jersey. All of that should be handled online, and would be if we had competent people running the MVC.

ADD: I didn't have the room to give the reason for those four-year registrations. They date to the days of Jim McGreevey. McGreevey would do anything to get some quick cash to spend. One of his stunts was to bond for billions of dollars and pay it off with surcharges on traffic tickets for 20 years. Another was forcing people who buy new cars to get four-year registrations. That gave him millions of dollars up-front - all at the expense of the next governor.

This is highway robbery. If you get rid of the car for some reason, you lose the remaining years of registration. Since most leases run for three years, that happens to drivers quite often. It would make sense to have three-year registrations for leased cars. Then you'd get all the paperwork our of the way up front. But don't expect state officials to make sense when they can make dollars profiting from their own errors.

Chris Christie of all people should have remedied this. During the 2009 campaign he was attacked because he had been ticketed in Lambertville for an expired registration. The Jon Corzine people made a big deal of this by arguing he used his influence to keep from having his car towed, something that often happens to people who have forgotten to renew their registrations for some reason.

These days you could renew the damn thing on your I-phone - if only the state would simplify the system. Instead they rely on paper documents. And as the example of my "surrendered " plates shows, they can't handle paper documents.

ALSO: I sent the MVC people a detailed e-mail requesting they answer a number of questions on every aspect of this. I also left a message. I never heard back.