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Originally published on Jul 14, 2004 by The Herald Tribune [here]

ACCENTURE
Shining light on company behind felon voter list
By Chris Davis and Matthew Doig

Accenture Contributed over $200,000 to Republicans or Republican Causes Since 2002

Accenture, a $14 billion company that has made millions doing government jobs, was supposed to help Florida create a bulletproof felon voter list. But state elections officials scrapped the list Saturday after newspaper reports reported a flaw that invalidated it. The demise of the list, which was three years in the making, renews questions about Accenture's strong Republican ties and its business practices. In fact, the company's resume is littered with connections to drama that the nation's Republican leadership would rather forget: Enron, Abu Ghraib and mysterious Saudi businessmen.

The company, once part of Enron's accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, jettisoned the Andersen name in 2001 to distance itself from scandal. But like Enron, it hasn't escaped the image of a company willing to bend the rules.

Last month, some members of Congress expressed concern about the Department of Homeland Security's giving a $10 billion contract to Accenture. They cited Accenture's Bermuda address, which they said was an attempt to dodge U.S. taxes.

Accenture eventually won the contract to design a system to track foreign visitors entering or leaving the United States.

Accenture will work on the venture with Titan Corporation, one of the companies whose employees were caught up in the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal in Iraq.

According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Accenture gave almost $192,000 to Republicans or Republican causes, and $116,000 to Democrats.

Before the 2002 election, Accenture gave $25,000 to Florida Republicans and none to Democrats, according to a Florida Division of Election records.

U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Fla., questions why state officials would put Florida's voters in the hands of a company with so many political ties.

"It smacks of political overtones," Meek said.

From the days when it was called Andersen Consulting, Accenture has drawn fire for running up prices on government contracts and missing deadlines.

Contracts in Texas, Virginia, Nebraska and Canada cost those governments millions more than expected, according to the Polaris Institute, which creates profiles on companies that do business with government.

The federal Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Accenture for a possible violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the U.S. law banning bribery of foreign officials. Accenture announced the investigation last week, saying it involved operations in the Middle East.

The company said the matter is also under review by the federal Department of Justice.

Meek said the state could have found a company without "such a history of wrong-doing and sloppy work."

The state Legislature passed a law after the 2000 election requiring the creation of a "central voter database." The lawmakers set aside $2 million for the task.

Florida hired Accenture because state officials were unable to negotiate an agreement with the Florida Association of Court Clerks to create a database of all voters in the state.

The purpose of that database was to strip ineligible voters from lists of registered voters that had been kept only on a county-by-county basis.

Accenture officials would not say how much they were paid, and state officials did not provide a copy of the contract Tuesday.

According to elections officials, Accenture was picked over a short list of companies, including IBM, to design, build and install the system that would create the statewide voter database.

Accenture subcontracted part of the work to a company called Election.com. In 2003, Newsday reported that majority control in Election.com had been bought by Osan Ltd., a group that included Saudi businessmen who wished to remain unnamed.

The federal government had hired Election.com to provide online voting services for military personnel in the 2004 election, Newsday reported.

Accenture's use of Election.com and it's experience dealing with elections issues played an important role in the state's decision to hire the company, according to Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of State.

Despite this experience, both companies failed to notice a serious problem with the database that stores felons. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement does not use Hispanic as a race category, while other databases gathered by Accenture did.

Because the state used race to identify potential felons on the voter rolls, people who registered to vote as Hispanic couldn't be matched with the FDLE list.

Election officials said there would be a similar problem with women who changed their names when they married.

The flaw went unnoticed until the Herald-Tribune reported last Wednesday that only 61 Hispanics were on the list.

Nicole de Lara, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood said Hood is "doing some information gathering on why this was not caught until now."

De Lara stopped short of calling it an investigation.

Accenture spokesman Jim McAvoy said Tuesday that his company was not responsible for sorting through the database -- work he said would have been necessary to recognize the flaw.

The company was contracted to gather specific databases and set up a system to store and use the information, not analyze the data for flaws, McAvoy said.

"We don't go mucking around in the data for no reason," he said.