According to an article from Wired, a Pentagon program that provides online voting in general elections will be increased from the pilot levels in 2000 of 86 users to over 100,000 voters in 2004.

The plan is to allow serving troops and ex-patriots to vote using a "secure" system in the 2004 general election, but only if they meet certain criteria. First, it is only open to users whose homes are in South Carolina or Hawaii or in a handful of counties in Arkansas, Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah or Washington. Second, voters must use a computer running Microsoft's Windows operating system ("for security reasons").

Of course, the big issue is security, and there are significant concerns about whether it can be maintained for such a significant endeavor, especially in the light of the uproar over the 2000 election results, and the importance of absentee ballots in same.

It will be an interesting experiment, and no-doubt controversial, much as it already is with privacy groups, security groups, and voting groups all arguing for and against the idea.