with another call to action.
Protesters rallied today at the State Elections Board office, calling for the cancellation of the state's $13 million outsourcing contract with the multinational management consulting firm Accenture to develop a statewide list of registered voters.
The Elections Board meets tomorrow, Wednesday, December 1 at 9:30 a.m. in the Common Council chambers of Brookfield City Hall at 2000 North Calhoun Road in the Milwaukee suburb.
The deal privatizing Wisconsin's voter registration system offends in numerous ways. It is a raw deal for taxpayers. State information technology specialists contend it should cost no more than $500,000 to develop a statewide voter list. A private consultant specializing in the development of voter lists echoes that contention in a guest column in today's Wisconsin State Journal.
The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign has considerable experience in developing databases, having created the state's only searchable computer database of state campaign contributors, and similarly finds the cost of the Accenture contract outrageously out of line.
Then there is the issue of outsourcing democracy by privatizing such a fundamental part of the election process - voter registration. The voter list contract will inevitably breed suspicion and mistrust among voters, especially since Accenture has a checkered past including involvement in the infamous purge of supposed felons in Florida before the 2000 election.
The Accenture contract, which was drawn up under a cloak of secrecy by the Elections Board, is another clear illustration of how unaccountable to the public this agency has become and why it needs to be restructured. Reforming the Elections Board and Ethics Board is step three in the Democracy Campaign's five-step Power to the Voter program.
For its part, the Doyle administration is gamely defending the voter list contract, and the governor is telling reporters that he doesn't want to insert himself into the growing controversy over the contract for fear of making it "political."
That posture is supremely ironic since the outsourcing of voter registration is the offspring of a political promise the governor made to eliminate 10,000 state jobs, thereby reducing the size of the state workforce to 1986 levels. Fulfilling that campaign promise has prompted the state to outsource government services to private companies, even when the cost of outsourcing is considerably greater for taxpayers.
In August, it was reported that the state was paying a private company whose top executives made big campaign donations to the governor nearly $80 an hour to maintain a road sign inventory that was previously done by a temporary state employee earning just over $11 an hour plus benefits.
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Wisconsin Democracy Campaign
210 North Bassett Street, Suite 215
Madison, WI 53703
Phone: 608-255-4260
Web Site:
http://www.wisdc.org