1. A method for automatically determining the issuing state of a license plate, said method comprising: processing via at least one optical character recognition engine, an image of a license plate acquired by an automatic license plate recognition engine, wherein each optical character recognition engine among said at least one optical character recognition engine is tuned to a particular state; analyzing confidence data output from said at least one optical character recognition engine to estimate an issuing state associated with said license plate, said estimated issuing state and said confidence output comprising a font based observation from said at least one optical character recognition engine; analyzing a syntax associated with said image of said license plate to estimate an issuing state associated with said license plate, said estimated issuing state comprising a syntax based observation; and merging multiple observations comprising said font based observation and said syntax based observation related to said issuing state to derive an overall conclusion and assign an associated confidence value with respect to said confidence data and determine a likely issuing state associated with said license plate.