But can a blinking Web page offer the “this-just-in” drama of watching the returns on TV? Probably not, but there could be fireworks of a different sort if any sites break the embargo on disclosing exit-poll results prematurely as Matt Drudge is vowing to do at drudgereport.com (www.drudgereport.com). And early on, when the results are trickling in, Internet sites may provide something better: no filler. Web surfers can spend the night paying the bills or watching a movie, clicking for an update whenever they want.

• America Online (www.aol.com), which has set up a war room to coordinate election coverage, will offer its members “Results Tracker,” a small window they can keep open to receive news flashes about big races while roaming elsewhere on the service. AOL will also host a chat room where visitors can talk about results as they’re announced. “It’s an election-night block party,” says Kathleen deLaski, AOL’s election-news guru.

• Voter.com (www.Voter.com) will spotlight 30 ballot initiatives around the country in addition to tracking candidate battles. If you didn’t draw on the Internet before making up your mind this year, it’s worth perusing the vast amount of voter data at this site to get a sense of how Web resources could influence future elections.

• The California secretary of state’s office (www.vote2000.ss.ca.gov) promises live election results updated every five minutes. Visitors can also activate a “custom video player” to monitor particular races and propositions. The site outshines many media outposts, but the quality of other state sites varies dramatically. Links to all official state election sites can be found at the Federal Voting Assistance Program’s site (http://www.fvap.gov/).

• Yahoo! has assembled election news and links to other relevant sites (www.politics.yahoo.com), but politics junkies on the go will want to click directly into the news alerts section to instruct Yahoo to beam hourly updates to a pager or cell phone.

• All the TV networks will post news on their Web sites, but ABC (www.abc.com) is making a special push to entice viewers to surf while they watch. It’s calling the offering “enhanced TV,” but that simply means it has Web screens tied in with the on-air broadcast through features like online polls.

USA Today, the Washington Post, the New York Times and other major newspapers will provide full coverage on the Web throughout the night, as will the online Journal at WSJ.com.

And if the results aren’t going your way, you can always lose yourself in the fictional world of presidential politics at www.jedbartlet.com (www.jedbartlet.com).