By Barry Ashenfelter

If you spend $50 for something you could have gotten for $5 you've wasted $45. You burned it. But, hey, it's your money.

If you spend 50 million taxpayer dollars for something you could have made or bought for $5 million, you really should have a good explanation for the $45 million pile of ashes. Poof, the money is gone.

The State Elections Board currently has its hands on $50 million worth of kindling. It's up to the legislature to keep it (and taxpayers) from getting torched.

Federal law requires that Wisconsin create a statewide list of registered voters. The federal government has kindly chipped in $40-$50 million to help do this, as well as make other election administration improvements. Several million dollars of state tax funds are also at (the) stake. Given the over-engineered system the Election Board has contracted for, many millions more will certainly be needed for upkeep and maintenance once the federal money goes up in smoke.

At a bare minimum, and the executive director of the Elections Board has publicly acknowledged this, the state could simply obtain a copy of every municipality's list of registered voters, combine them in one database and produce a statewide list of registered voters to comply with federal law. They could even post the database online for municipalities to access through the Internet. This could be done relatively quickly and the cost to do this should be well shy of $1 million.

This simplistic solution meets the federal mandate, and goes a long way toward creating a useful Election Day tool for local clerks and poll workers. Wisconsin could then take its time to create a statewide voter system that actually improves the security and administration of elections. $49 million would still be in the bank.

To begin to create a truly useful voter system the state needs to capture basic registration information about adults who vote regularly but aren't currently registered because they live in a small town or village that doesn't keep a voter registration list. The voter system should also note all voting-age adults with felony convictions and make that information available to poll workers on Election Day (not just delete felons from the list). Further, the system needs to keep name and address information as accurate and up-to-date as possible.

These database enhancements should only cost another $1 million to $4 million more. Then there is $45 million left to help improve access for handicapped persons, buy better vote-counting machines, maintain and enhance the voter file as time goes by, offset local election administration costs, and a host of other better use possibilities.

Our company has created and maintained for five years a much-used and similar statewide voter database, for $1 million. That price tag includes additional (and expensive) enhancements for political use, such as partisan ID's, birth dates, etc. So, the savings actually could be even greater than envisioned above.

The paper poll lists and electronic voter files created by the new system and used by local clerks and poll workers on Election Day should prevent fraud and speed up voting. Instead, I fear, the smoke from an overcooked system and $45 million on fire will only make things more unclear.

Names and addresses on paper. These lists of voters are the endpoint, the goal of the whole enterprise. The "system" that creates these lists doesn't need to be so complicated and so expensive.

Governor Doyle recently announced a plan to reduce wasteful state spending and eliminate unnecessary "bells and whistles." His Chief Information Officer at DOA just received national recognition for his efforts to cut state agency information technology costs. The voter list project is crying out for some common sense.

The current course of action is unwise and wasteful. Legislators should cancel the current contract with Accenture and keep it simple.