The State of Wisconsin entered into a contract on November 12, 2004 with the global outsourcing firm Accenture to develop a statewide voter registration list. Under the contract, Accenture was to be paid $13.9 million for computer software development and maintenance. Subsequent changes to the agreement boosted the figure to $14.1 million.

A lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s director and other citizens seeking cancellation of the contract on the grounds that state Elections Board director Kevin Kennedy lacked legal authority to sign the Accenture contract. The Elections Board did not vote to approve the contract before it was signed, and did not vote to authorize a Request for Proposals soliciting bids from private vendors.

Elections Board staff also withheld information from the public about the status of the contract when briefing board members. Accenture was chosen in mid-October and a letter of intent was issued on October 15, 2004 awarding the contract to the company. But a report presented to the board on October 20 said only that the procurement process was proceeding and that a final vendor had not yet been selected.

A circuit court judge ruled on June 2, 2005 that the Elections Board's director did not have the authority to enter into the agreement with Accenture, but nevertheless upheld the contract on the grounds that the board retroactively ratified the contract on January 27, 2005 - more than a month after the contract was legally challenged.

The Democracy Campaign also asked Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager to investigate whether Wisconsin’s open government laws were violated in the awarding of the contract. A Justice Department investigation was launched and resulted in Accenture providing access to its proprietary software, ensuring that confidential voter information not be copied or sold, and surrendering control of the source code it will write to program computers used to registered voters. Under the original contract, this computer code was Accenture's private property and was not open to inspection by state officials.

Development of a statewide voter list is one of many changes required by the federal Help American Vote Act. Work on the voter list was supposed to be completed by January 1, 2006.

In addition to the $14.1 million the state has agreed to pay Accenture, millions more are being spent on other aspects of the voter registration project – including at least $4.1 million to another private firm, Deloitte Consulting, for project management and $10.2 million for state Elections Board staff oversight, hardware and data entry – for a total cost of at least $28.4 million. In contrast, Minnesota relied on state employees to do its statewide voter list and completed the work at a cost of $5.3 million.

The outsourcing of voter registration in Wisconsin is the offspring of a political promise Governor Jim Doyle 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.

One study showed that the cost of doing government work with outside contractors is 18 percent more expensive than having state employees do the work. In one instance, the state paid a private firm nearly $80 an hour to maintain a road sign inventory previously kept by a state employee making $11 an hour. The state gave the same company a $685,000 no-bid contract to build and maintain a web site about a Milwaukee-area highway construction project while several web experts said they could have created the site for half the cost or less but were never given the chance to bid for the work.

The selection of Accenture to develop Wisconsin ’s voter registration list is particularly controversial. The company had a hand in the notorious purge of suspected felons from Florida voter lists before the 2004 elections. More on Accenture’s role in the Florida felon purge.

Accenture was a division of the accounting firm Arthur Andersen known as Andersen Consulting before the Enron accounting scandal forced a name change. Accenture’s parent company is headquartered in Bermuda to avoid paying taxes in the United States. Wisconsin officials have bristled at the charge that Accenture is headquartered offshore for tax avoidance purposes, maintaining that it is an Illinois-based firm. This claim is undercut, ironically, by Accenture itself. A company representative defended its record of avoiding U.S. taxes by telling a Texas newspaper "Accenture is not and never has been a U.S.-based or U.S.-operated organization."

The company also has come under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the federal law banning bribery of foreign officials.

Accenture is no stranger to influence peddling in the U.S., either. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, company executives and Accenture’s political committees made donations of $726,105 to federal campaigns in the 2004 election cycle. Of that, $534,067 went to Republicans and $188,788 went to Democrats.