THE e-voting pilot scheme launched by Swindon Council this year was the biggest and among the most successful in the country, according to the Electoral Commission.

The council was one of 30 councils to trial new ways of voting in the local elections in May.

While all other councils restricted the trials to only a few wards, or trialled only one new kind of voting, Swindon Council was the only one to conduct the trial across all council wards using telephone, internet and postal voting.

And the success of the trials could lead to the first e-General Election by the end of the decade, the Commission believes.

Alan Winchcombe, deputy returning officer at Swindon Council, managed the voting trials for the council.

He was called to the Com-mission's London headquarters yesterday along with officers from four other councils whose trials were also considered a success.

Mr Winchcombe said: "Our scheme was the biggest in the country and was successful and well managed.

The trial cost only £42,000 which was paid for by the Government and we saw an increase of 3.5 per cent in voter turnout.

"A lot of that increase was down to political parties being a lot more active in certain wards, but I feel we helped stop the rot in Swindon in terms of the nationwide downturn in voting.

"When you have 16 per cent of the local electorate using e-voting and wanting to do it again next year, you have to say that is a success.

He said the Government wants Swindon Council to do the trials again next year, but that will be a matter for councillors to decide.

Of the 30 trials, nine councils did e-voting trials and there were more e-voters in Swindon in percentage terms than anywhere else.

Stephen Judson, policy mana-ger for the Electoral Commission, said: "Swindon's trial was very positive.

"We welcomed the fact that they had been innovative in selecting the schemes they were trialling and we recognised that by providing internet, postal and telephone voting in addition to the traditional methods, they offered voters greater flexibility."

The Commission said the Government needed to set out a clearer vision of the future of voting if it was to meet its target of an e-enabled election sometime after 2006.