By Amy Rinard

Communities and counties across the state do a brisk business selling their lists of voters to political candidates and parties, the media and even companies that do telephone polls.

In 2003, during the lead-up to a hotly contested spring 2004 mayoral election and a number of contested aldermanic races, the City of Milwaukee, which charges the most of any municipality in the state for electronic copies of its voter list, had revenues totaling $50,093 from such sales. In other municipalities and counties that maintain county-wide voter lists, revenue from selling them, which usually also include at least a partial history of elections in which those voters cast ballots, is far more modest.

"The county's not exactly getting rich on this, trust me," said John Buhler, technology resources director for Ozaukee County, noting that his county probably received less than $1,000 last year from sales of county-wide voter lists.

"We're just recouping our costs."

The lists are used mostly by candidates for elected office and by political parties to target campaign mailings and get-out-the-vote efforts to people known to be frequent voters.

They're also requested by private firms that do telephone polls of prospective voters and by news organizations and others checking for voting irregularities.

Voter lists have been in the news lately. They formed the basis of a Journal Sentinel investigation of voting in Milwaukee in the last election and also apparently were used by the NAACP when that organization recently took a look at voting in the suburbs.

State law allows municipalities and counties to charge as much for the lists as is needed to cover their staff and other costs of complying with a request for those records.

The fees charged for the lists vary greatly among communities and do not seem related to the population of the community or size of the database requested, said Barry Ashenfelter, customer service representative for Wisconsin Voter Lists, a firm that is compiling a statewide voter list by requesting lists from every municipality and county.

For example, he said, Milwaukee charges $404 for its voter list, while the state's second-largest city, Madison, charges just $34.

"It doesn't seem to be a matter of how big or how small a community is; everyone does it differently," said Ashenfelter, a former Capitol staffer who noted that at one time Milwaukee charged $1,000 per voter list.

He said many communities do not have their voter lists on computer and usually charge 25 cents per page for paper copies.

Buhler said in Ozaukee County the fee for each request for a copy of the county-wide voter list is calculated individually based on the format being requested.

"There are so many variables," he said.

Requesters can get the records on paper copies, computer disk or electronic spreadsheets, which are e-mailed.

Like many communities, Ozaukee County also will sort its voter list by households and print mailing labels that often are purchased by candidates and used to mail campaign brochures.

Some communities have a set fee structure used to assess charges for all requests.

The City of Waukesha, for example, charges $10 for 1,000 mailing labels printed off the city's voter list. Obtaining the entire city voter file, with or without the voter history, will cost a requester $50 plus tax. Getting a paper printout of that list, including the voter history, costs $380. Without the history, the charge is $285.

Brookfield charges $35 for a copy of its voter list on disk or an e-mailed version; West Bend charges $10. The Village of Germantown charges $60.

Marie Bieber, Waukesha deputy clerk/treasurer, did not know how much revenue a year the sales of voter lists generates for the city, but noted that even if there were 10 requests for an electronic version of the list that still would only be $500.

"It's not a significant revenue source in the whole scheme of things," she said.

Even for Milwaukee, the sale of voter lists is not a money-maker, said Dennis Yaccarino, city economist.

"It's not extra money," he said. "Basically, we're just trying to recover our costs."