At press time, it is still not clear who will be the next president of the United Sates, and based upon current legal jockeying by both candidates, the battle could go on for weeks. And if you think you are frustrated, think about Al Gore. It looks like he has won the majority vote, yet he has a less-than-even chance of winning the White House. Worse, if Mr. Gore loses, it will be because he lost by only a couple of hundred votes in a state that invalidated 19,000 ballots in a presumably Gore-friendly county due to "double-voting" and other voting irregularities. And to add even more pain to Mr. Gore's electoral punishment, it looks like two thousand or so voters in Florida who thought they were voting for him ended up voting for Pat Buchanan due to a confusing -- to some -- "butterfly" ballot. The bottom line is that if, as Mr. Gore's campaign is now saying, the will of the voters of Florida were reflected in the way their votes were (or were not) tabulated, then Al Gore would be next president of the United States.

The situation is only a tad less frustrating for George W. Bush. Before all the Florida polls were closed, most of the network TV and cable news shows were prematurely (and wrongly) calling Mr. Gore the winner in that state. This was particularly discouraging for the Bush campaign because the part of the state where the polls were still open, the so-called Panhandle, is supposedly Bush-friendly. And the campaign understandably speculates that many Bush supporters in that region did not end up voting after they heard the state was already lost to Mr. Gore. The Bush campaign further complains that after the networks wrongly called Florida for Mr. Gore and started muttering that things looked bleak for their man, many of the precinct workers getting out the vote for Bush in the West went home early. This, the Bush people say, could have cost them the majority vote and victories in Oregon and New Mexico. The bottom line is, if the network and cable TV and the news services feeding them had withheld their final declarations a few more hours, George W. Bush could have had been the undisputed president of the United States.

At this point, we remain hopeful that each candidate will rise above his disappointments and be ready, for the good of our country and our standing in the free world, to accept a reasonable and expeditious resolution. But no matter what the resolution, because of the confusion surrounding the Florida vote and missteps by the media, whichever candidate wins will have to work very quickly to overcome questions of legitimacy and establish a semblance of an electoral mandate.

One quick way for a new president to gain the confidence of the American citizen would be to immediately confront the ancient voting systems currently in place and replace them with an all-out Internet strategy. I know I run the risk of sounding like one of the Silicon Valley dot-commers who whooped up investor excitement about the Internet so much that everyone lost half their net worth, but hear me out.

The new president could encourage each state to work in conjunction with county governments to build and maintain a comprehensive and fully interactive election Web site. Most importantly, citizens would be able to freely access this site and use it to register and to vote. In addition, the site would include all the voter information required by law and provide links to the campaign sites of every candidate on the ballot and to groups fighting for or against ballot initiatives and referenda. The federal and state Election Commissions could also provide campaign contribution information, so voters could see what individuals, businesses, and political interests are funding each candidate and initiative.

The site could also provide a way for citizens to customize their state government's home page to reflect their election priorities and include personally selected links to outside news and information sources. Really cool states would build in free email and chat room services during the election season, so citizens could banter with each other about the election and share information. After all, what could be more democratic than encouraging the free flow and availability of information? We have already witnessed how both parties have used the Internet and "e-campaigning" to effectively target and mobilize their voters. And given that Yahoo (Nasdaq : YHOO) recorded a 357 percent increase in viewer use of its political news section in the two days before the election, and CNN.com and ABC.com registered record page views on election day, it's clear that voters are already turning to the Internet as an election resource.

Now, I don't have all sorts of polling data to support my claims, but I think it is a good bet that Internet-based voting would eliminate most, if not all, of the issues surrounding this year's presidential election. In addition, it is very likely that it would substantially increase voter turnout. A completely automated voting process would have several additional advantages. First, the system could be designed so voters could review their voting choices on screen or on a printout before pulling the final lever. The system could also be designed to ask the voters, say, three times whether they are ready to send in their votes, and it would prevent double voting. The site could incorporate a help page to walk voters through the process, and each state could make operators available toll-free to help people vote online without confusion. Properly executed, an Internet-based voting system could significantly minimize voter mistakes and eliminate the whole idea of recounting.

We could also require that states refrain from announcing their voting results until all polls are closed nationally. That way, voters in states whose polls close later would feel that their votes carry the same political weight as citizens who vote earlier. And because many votes would be cast from the comfort of voters' homes, it would be more difficult for media outlets to influence voting behavior by conducting exit polls. In the end, we would all do what we should be doing: wait for every vote to be counted before we hear who the winner is.

Internet-based voting would also allow citizens to register to vote up until the last minute, check whether they are indeed registered, and update their records if necessary. Voters could cast their votes from any Internet-enabled device, from any location in the world, which would, again, increase total voter turnout. Citizens who are sick, traveling, or just too busy, for example, could easily cast their votes using a wireless device -- from home, work, a hotel room, or the back of a taxi cab.

To soothe the Luddites, states could still snail-mail printed ballot information to people who request it and allow people to mail in paper absentee ballots if they wish. There could be Internet-enabled public voting booths for people who don't own Internet-enabled devices or who would like personal assistance in executing their online vote. In terms of voter security, if we can make the world safe for ATM machines, we can certainly figure out a way to provide direct and secure voting access for every citizen, whether at home or abroad.

This election year in particular has made it embarrassingly clear that the most powerful democracy in the world needs a better way to vote. The spectacle of election officials holding up paper ballots to the light and squinting to see which hole a voter punched should make all of us squirm. The sad reality is that this election is so close this year that it matters whether certain ballots were missing, stuck together, or designed in a confusing manner. Neither Al Gore nor George W. Bush invented the Internet, but whoever ends up capturing the White House will have a historic opportunity to turn a bungled chapter in U.S. history into a mandate to secure our role as the first Internet nation. That alone would be a great legacy for any future president.