Let us look piece by piece at how elections work and how we can make them more convenient to people's lifestyles

Stephen Coleman Commission chairman

Commons Leader Robin Cook has said he wants the UK to become the first country in the world to use the internet for voting, perhaps as soon as the next general election.

The independent commission set up by the ERS cautions against rushing into such change and recommends tight safeguards to prevent ballot fraud.

'Public confidence first'

Stephen Coleman, who chaired the inquiry, said: "This commission has taken a long, cool, calm look at a range of alternative methods of voting and wants to see a gradual approach to testing and implementing them.

Robin Cook wants the UK to be trialled this year

"Let us look piece by piece at how elections work and how we can make them more convenient to people's lifestyles."

Dr Coleman said public confidence in the electoral process had to be top of the agenda in examining new voting methods.

The commission's full report, entitled "Elections in the 21st century: from paper ballot to e-voting", is published on Tuesday.

Its main recommendations are:

• Establishing a technology task force before any online pilots begin to assess and challenge the system

• Using elector cards with PIN numbers in telephone and online voting to prevent fraud

• Requiring extra information, such as dates of birth, to be listed on electoral registration forms to limit postal voting fraud

• Extending experiments for all-postal ballots, telephone voting and electronic voting/counting to some European regions and parliamentary by-elections before considering them for national use