Internet voting could have saved U.S.election day

　　The ultra-close U.S.presidential election--which co uld take days to determine--has made the case for inter net voting as no other political event could have done, online experts said.

　　Instead of a long wait for a recount of the votes i n florida for democrat Al Gore and Republican george W. Bush to be completed, online experts said internet voti ng would only take minutes to recheck.

　　"The problem with any election is that the audit tr ial is arduous and error-prone. But with the internet, the audit process is right there and it is fast," said jim adler, chief exeucutive officer of votehere.net, wh ich ran online trials for the U.S.presidential eldction in califormia and arizona.

　　In thr pilot, people cast online votes ahead of ele ction day at polling site in san diego and sacramento, calif, and on election day in maricopa county, arizona. None of these online votes counted toward the final pre sidential tally.

　　The florda vote recount is not expected to be compl eted until the close of business on Nov.9 with ballots cast by americans living abroad taking another 10 days to tally.

　　"It took 10 minutes to count all the results in are as where we tested online voting and we maintained the secrecy of the ballots," adler said.

　　The actual number crunching takes only seconds, but participation by election officials and party observers in the process can add minutes. Hundreds of people vote d in the trials.

　　"If there had been millions of voters, it would hav e still taken only minutes to tabulate(把…列成表格), " adler said.

　　By sue zeidler