For immediate release
Contact: Barry Ashenfelter, 920-988-7216

First Kansas quits them (est. pop. 2.8 million).

Next Colorado cuts and runs (est. pop. 4.7 million).

Now Wyoming (est. pop. 510,000 - the smallest state in the country) is throwing in the towel.

These states all cancelled their voter list development contracts with Accenture. They all cited significant problems with the software and said the company was not meeting their needs or expectations. They are all smaller than Wisconsin.

Wisconsin, with an estimated population of 5.6 million (more than 10-times larger than Wyoming), is sticking it out and staying with Accenture.

"Two college kids with a computer could probably create a state voter list for Wyoming," said Barry Ashenfelter, a representative of Wisconsin Voter Lists. "If you can't do it there, you can't do it anywhere."

Lowlights of the Wisconsin Project
The list is late. A federal deadline has come and gone.

The Elections Board "hopes" for a statewide September launch, but smart money says the "system" probably won't even be ready for the November general election.

$25 - $30 million will be wasted if the contract continues.

A good state voter list would prevent fraud and expedite voting on Election Day. If this list is ever completed it will likely be a giant mess of errors and inaccuracies for many, many years.

Wyoming officials say the Accenture system "had more features than (they) needed... (with) too many bells and whistles." In hindsight, they say, a basic system to meet their needs would have cost about $1 million. Ditto for Wisconsin.

The Elections Board is now begging Accenture, a multi-national corporate behemoth which posted "net" revenues of $4.17 billion for the first quarter of fiscal year 2006 (only about 40% of which come from North America), to commit to a long-term relationship with continued support. Accenture said, sure, but they don't plan to work on other state elections systems in the future. Now there's a promise you can take to the bank.