E-voting "should not be pursued any further without significant improvements to testing and implementation and a system of individual voter registration", the commission said.

Although remote voting systems had "in broad terms" proved successful and facilitated voting, "the level of implementation and security risk involved was significant and unacceptable", the watchdog found.

The commission goes on to say that the rollout of e-voting machines was poorly planned and executed.

Electoral Commission chief executive Peter Wardle said: "We have learnt a good deal from pilots over the past few years. But we do not see any merit in continuing with small-scale, piecemeal piloting where similar innovations are explored each year without sufficient planning and implementation time, and in the absence of any clear direction, or likelihood of new insights."

In some of the pilot areas for both e-counting and e-voting, "it was clear that local authority elections staff were supplier-led", the commission warned.

Also, security researchers found that e-voting machine vendors seemed to think of security as an add-on, which of course is a recipe for disaster.

In short, when we are developing or acquiring applications we need to:

1. Think about security as fundamental, it isn't an add on.
2. Understand how we will test and test during development and not too far into the process
3. Not depend on vendors to lead us through the process
4. Be ready to pull the plug when the risks out weigh the benefits