The country's biggest trial of electronic voting ends today, with 1.4m people having the opportunity to vote without going to a polling station.

Following successful trials in six boroughs in 2002, evoting has been extended to 17 boroughs for this year's local council elections.

Voters in areas including Swindon, St Albans and Ipswich have been able to use the internet, interactive television, telephone and text messaging to cast their votes over the past week.

Some 10m people will be eligible to e-vote next year, and 20m in 2005, according to John Ellis, head of the Athena Consortium, one of the groups providing infrastructure and technology to support the trials. He says that gaining public trust is one of the main factors in making electronic voting a success.

'Securing e-voting must not only be done, but must be seen to be done,' he said. 'We also know from experience that delivering secure systems is one thing, but getting people to use and trust it is another thing.'

Telewest is providing broadband connectivity for Athena, and Cisco is supplying telephony systems and data centre components.

Sixty per cent of people would be more willing to vote if they could do so electronically, according to research published last week by the Electoral Commission.