The votes are in. And they're uncontested.

Nearly one-fifth of Americans looked for campaign news online in 2000, according to the Pew Research Center for People and the Press. That's way up from 4 percent in 1996. National news sites like CNN.com and MSNBC.com topped the list for election coverage.

If the pace keeps up, the Web will replace newspapers as the second most popular source for political news, just behind TV.

But despite the recent growth, the Web has yet to mature as a source of campaign news, the Pew Research Center reports. Lee Rainie, the director of Pew's Internet and American Life Project, says 2000 was not the 'big 'Internet election', not like 1960 was the 'TV election.' It won't be 2004 either. Maybe 2008 will be; it depends on how quickly technical devices catch up.'

But online news producers are generally happy with their election night numbers. 'In 1996, we tried to cover the election. In 2000 we were quite successful, our traffic jumped on election night, so we're definitely going to see more demand in 2004,' says Douglas Feaver, executive editor of WashingtonPost.com.

The big question for folks like Feaver is not whether online news will be a player in the next election cycle. The question is what it will look like. Today's Web news is often fairly detailed, but otherwise it looks, reads, and sounds a lot like newspapers, radio and TV (except in terms of video quality, where it doesn't look as good as broadcast). It is simply the ease and convenience of logging on, for example, at the office, that brings in readers. The content is pretty much available elsewhere.

But some of 2000's trends may signal changes for Net news. Sites offering something new and different may attract more traffic the next time around.

Matt Drudge promised to post raw exit polling data at his site before the polls closed. Millions of people, curious about the election, ignored that traditional media's self-imposed embargo and clicked on his site. Minutes later, the Drudge Report crashed, overwhelmed by the demand.

'People want that information,' says Carl Gottlieb, deputy director of Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism. He supports the media's embargo on the exit data, but acknowledges that the high demand for such news may make it more accessible.

Others see a different future for Net news. 'The wild and wacky sites are always going to have trouble getting an audience because of consolidation,' said Scott Woelfel, CNN Interactive's president

Eric Meyer, a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois, agrees. 'I see less renegade news, like Drudge, and more functional, imaginative news in the Web's future.'

Meyer predicts news sites will continue to offer more information than newspapers and broadcast news operations do. Web news sites will distinguish themselves by their wealth of detail and increasingly, with interactive components.

'You'll be able to search and see which candidate has views on, for instance, the protection of the wombat, and then vote accordingly,' he said.

But for now, it is the big national news sites -- from TV networks and major newspapers -- that are attracting the most traffic and the most attention. They are strong on covering the world, but not so great on local wombat ordinances.

And that has some critics worried, such as Gordon and Meyer. Click on a big, national news site, and you get big, national news. You might know what's happening in Washington D.C., but what about the names of your local school board members? People who choose a national news Web site over a local one lose the 'serendipity factor;' they don't hear the names of local candidates in passing, they don't glance at an article about a local race.

News on the Web is changing. 'Now you have a breakdown in the old news, politics, sports, weather together. Now you have to go to six different Web sites to find all that stuff out, and who's going to do that?' says Rich Gordon, who heads the new media program at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

People who use the Net can choose sites that tailor their information, to filter out opposing points of view or unwanted information. If you only log on to conservative news sites, or national news sites, or even the Antique Car Buff Web site, you lose the potpourri of information on the 6 o'clock news. You simply don't know what the zoning board is up to.

'In part because of the Internet, we are increasingly less tied to the community in which we live. We don't care who's running for mayor,' says Meyer. 'That's the negative trend of the Web; it is creating virtual communities that are distinct from geography. Now it's this sense of 'my neighborhood is in my chatroom.''

Some -- generally younger -- politicians are aware of the problem. Doug Gansler, elected as Montgomery County State's Attorney in Maryland, says 'people know all politics is local. To be informed about local politics, people need to go to local sites.'

But online newshounds need to work a little harder to stay on top of local issues. In Montgomery County, voters can't simply rely (yet) on WashingtonPost.com for their local news. The information is readily available elsewhere; click on the Montgomery County Gazette's site. People just need to search for it.

On balance, Gansler says, the Internet is a good thing for politicians and everybody else -- the more easily interested voters can get information, the better a democracy works.

Medill's Gordon ultimately agrees. 'The idea of more information on the Web ends up being a good thing for society and democracy,' he said.

If the Web is good for society and democracy, then the news is just going to get better. By 2004, local political news will probably be accessible across the board, from ABCNews.com to Maine's Bar Harbor Times newspaper.

Since the Web's promise is to answer every need, no matter how rarified, news organizations may scramble to offer local politics to those who want it. 'I see candidates, local and national, treating online media as a major outlet for getting their message out,' says CNN's Woelful.

It is just so easy, says Pew's Lee Rainie, for smaller local sites and the big national ones to provide more local news. 'Probably a lot of sites will figure out its not that hard to plug in data like a ZIP code and kick out a lot of local information -- the databases already exist.'

AOL, for example, already offers localized information. Rainie says local TV, radio, and newspapers will rush to provide localized politics, either on their own or by linking up with a national site.

Gordon agrees. 'We're heading toward more customized, personalized information, which is easy to do for politics, based on geography,' he said. 'It's a little harder to know if people are interested in sports or business news.'

Many online news bosses are eager to offer targeted news. CNN plans to do it in the next few years, said Woelfel. 'We looked at it this year, but didn't think the infrastructure could handle it,' he said. He also says the company is 'very interested' in forming alliances with local news organizations.

Woelfel goes so far as to predict online voting by 2004 'at least at the state level, if not at the national level.' Then we'll all be able to vote at our desks and sneak over to Drudge to find out who the guy in the next cubicle voted for.