PHOENIX, Ariz. -- With the click of a computer mouse, Arizona Democrats made U.S. history Tuesday by becoming the first Americans to use the Internet to cast ballots in a legally binding election.

Election officials reported little trouble early on as Democrats statewide were allowed to jump online, log in to a special Web site, punch in their identification numbers and vote for their choice for the Democratic presidential candidate.

"We think this is very important in the future of how elections are conducted," Cortland Coleman, the party's interim executive director, told Reuters. "We're setting an example for what we hope will happen across the country and the world."

Fifty Internet votes were cast in the first 20 minutes of virtual voting. About 1,000 Democrats had voted on the Web by 8 a.m. local time.

"There are no major snafus that I know of right now," said William Taylor, sales vice president for Election.com, the Garden City, New York, company running the Internet election. "Everything is going smoothly."

Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor, kicked off the plan at 12:01 a.m. by casting the first ballot in an election that is being closely watched here and abroad for its potential implications. She voted for Vice President Al Gore.

The state's 823,000 registered Democrats will be able to vote over the Internet for the next four days, with the newfangled polls closing at 11:59 p.m. Friday. The more traditional polling sites will be open Saturday for electronic and paper voting.

Officials hope that 100,000 party faithful will vote in this year's election with the boost from the Internet, compared with about 12,800 people who voted during the last presidential preference election in 1996.

Finding a way to increase turnout -- especially from traditionally vote-shy Generation-Xers -- was one of several reasons cited for making a foray into these uncharted waters.

Officials said they also hoped to generate some excitement for the new method of voting and raise national awareness of their primary.

The Republican and Democratic primaries in Arizona are held on different days, and the start of the Democratic online vote coincided with "Super Tuesday," the biggest day of the 2000 presidential election campaign.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain has already won his party's primary -- with voters casting their ballots the traditional way.

The Internet election attracted controversy on several fronts. A federal judge cleared the way for the election last week, turning down a request to stop Internet voting by the Voting Integrity Project of Arlington, Virginia. The group filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Hispanic woman and an African-American man, charging the online plan discriminated against the poor and minorities, and branding Internet voting "a new millennium version of the literacy test."

The election follows a new Zogby America survey that found voters were not yet ready to quit going to the traditional polls. The February poll of 1,208 adults showed that 66.1 percent of those surveyed thought that allowing Americans to cast Internet votes was a bad idea. Another 23.7 percent said it was a good idea and 10.2 percent were not sure. But Mark Fleisher, state Democratic chairman, predicted that Internet voting would be common by the 2004 elections. "You're going to see more people doing this, many more people," he said.