Voting list tab from Accenture too steep, Pocan says

By Judith Davidoff
March 2, 2005

 Wisconsin is paying three times what Minnesota spent to compile a federally mandated statewide voter list.

According to the Minnesota Secretary of State's Office, which oversees elections in the state, Minnesota spent $5.3 million to develop, in-house, a statewide voter list that complies with the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

Wisconsin recently signed a $13.9 million contract with Accenture LLC, a subsidiary of a Bermuda-based conglomerate, to create and maintain the state's voter registration list through 2010, and a $2.7 million contract with DeLoitte Consulting LLP to manage the project.

Wisconsin's tab is unnecessarily steep, says state Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, adding that Wisconsin won't even own the program software after its contract with Accenture expires in five years.

Pocan also said the state, according to a Legislative Fiscal Bureau report, is set to spend up to $5 million more to transfer voter information from paper ballots for the 1,500 municipalities that don't require voter registration. "That's the hardest part and that's where we haven't budgeted yet," Pocan said.
The legitimacy of the Accenture contract is the subject of a lawsuit.

Wisconsin is using $43 million in federal funding provided under the Help America Vote Act, and state matching funds of $2.3 million, to develop, implement and maintain a statewide voter registration system; $18 million of the pot will be used to purchase accessible voting machines, another requirement of the law.

Pocan scheduled a news conference for this morning to urge that Wisconsin break any ties with Accenture and follow Minnesota's lead and compile its statewide voter list in-house. At the very least, Pocan said, Wisconsin could buy the software already developed by Minnesota as a first step.

"We need to move ahead with this issue," Pocan said in an interview. "The bottom line is that Minnesota has what it needs to be HAVA compliant and it didn't spend $16 million to do it."

But Kevin Kennedy, executive director of the state Elections Board, said it is impossible to compare the two states.

"We knew going in we had probably one of the most complicated implementations to do," Kennedy said.

Minnesota, which compiled its federally mandated statewide voter list in time for the 2004 presidential election, had a huge advantage over Wisconsin in that its system is county-based and was already connected to a statewide computer system, Kennedy said.

"Wisconsin is a municipal-based system so it's much more complicated," he said.

Kennedy noted that 1,500 of Wisconsin's 1,850 municipalities don't require voter registration, so voter data from these localities need to be hand-entered into the new system. Kennedy added that Wisconsin's voter registration project also includes standardizing registration data among all Wisconsin's counties.

Pocan said Kennedy is exaggerating the complexity of the project and added that candidates in Wisconsin regularly buy comprehensive voter registration lists from private firms. "There are lists out there we all use," Pocan said.

He said a number of private companies have already indicated they'd be able to prepare Wisconsin's statewide voter list for $1 million.

Wisconsin's contract with Accenture has been controversial from the start. Critics say Accenture played a role in the creation of Florida's flawed felon voter registration database and claim that Wisconsin state employees could have compiled a statewide voter list at a much more economical price.

In late December, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and others filed suit in Dane County Circuit Court alleging that Kennedy did not have the authority to sign the contract with Accenture without approval by the Elections Board.

The Department of Justice is also investigating whether state open records or open meetings laws were violated in the procurement process.

Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer said in a phone interview that she didn't want to comment on whether Wisconsin was paying too much for its new system. But she said she largely stayed clear of contractors in order to have more control over the final product.

Kiffmeyer, a Republican who was first elected in 1998, said she drew on her technology background to hire and train skilled technology personnel. She said these employees were then able to take on the bulk of the voter registration project, leaving only specific tasks to specific consultants who were hired on a temporary basis.

"It gave us full control and I want to tell you it worked," Kiffmeyer said.

She added that there was a lot of skepticism, especially from Democrats in her state, about the way she managed the voter registration project. But now even one of those lawmakers, Democratic Minnesota state Sen. Linda Higgins, acknowledges the system "worked fairly well."

In a letter to Pocan, Higgins says Wisconsin should keep looking for another vendor.

"The amount quoted to you is outrageous," she wrote. "I see no reason why you couldn't hire someone to design the system, then use public employees to do data entry and system administration."

But Kennedy said not all the news coming out of Minnesota has been rosy. He said he heard from at least a couple of county election officials that there were glitches with its statewide voter registration system.

"I think there is more there than meets the eye," he said.