The study finds that these usability concerns cannot be addressed by adding paper trails to e-voting systems, and concludes that most critics have focused on the wrong issues.

"Recent history is clear: the election problem most likely to tilt a close race is not security, but the inability of voters to cast their ballots the way they intended," says Paul Herrnson, principal investigator and a University of Maryland political scientist who directs the school's Center for American Politics and Citizenship. "The hazards of poor ballot design didn't end with Florida's hanging, pregnant and dimpled chads in 2000. But tremendous improvement in voters' abilities to cast their votes accurately and without assistance can be accomplished simply by improving the way ballots are laid out on touch screen and paper-based systems."

The five-year study is the most comprehensive of its kind, focusing exclusively on usability issues and relying on data from field tests with more than 1,500 subjects, laboratory tests and expert reviews. The results and recommendations are reported in the new book, Voting Technology: The Not-So-Simple Act of Casting a Ballot, published by the Brookings Press.-University of Maryland