Germany outlined cautious plans on Thursday to allow some citizens to vote online in 2006, but officials stressed that reliability and security were more important than speed and ease of access.
"We want to be totally sure that electoral integrity will be maintained, thus it will be a step-by-step process," Interior Minister Otto Schily told reporters after a government organised conferenceon Internet democracy.
After carefully rebuilding democracy after the Nazi era and establishing a strong postwar tradition of privacy, Germany has only slowly embraced the Internet's possibilities for changing the way elections are conducted.
Some German universities have used Internet voting for internal elections.
Mr Schily said Germans would probably be able to vote anywhere in the country in 2006 at polling stations linked electronically, instead of being restricted to their home districts as at present.
It was unclear when the country might introduce a system where anyone could vote from any Internet-connected computer. Mr Schily said it might be possible by 2010.