Man Comes Forward As Web Site Originator

AP/November 1, 2004 12:46 PM EST

History may never know how many working hours were lost to Andrew Tanenbaum's Web site, http://www.electoral-vote.com.

The site features a map of the United States in shades of blue, red, pink and white and a tally of which way the electoral college vote will go if the most recent polls are correct. (White is for tied, light blue is for states that are weakly leaning toward Kerry, pink is for states that are weakly leaning toward Bush.)

Updated as the poll numbers from each state arrive, it has become one of the world's 1,000 most popular Web sites and gets 600,000 visitors a day, according to Tanenbaum. At 11 a.m. EST, the site had Kerry ahead of Bush, 298 electoral votes to 231.

Until Monday, Tanenbaum maintained his anonymity.

Tanenbaum, an American living in Amsterdam, where he is a computer science professor at Vrije Universiteit, posted his biography on the site Monday. He said he lives in The Netherlands because his wife, who is Dutch, "couldn't do her kind of work in the U.S. whereas I could work anywhere."

He started the Web site as a means to register other overseas voters. Until last week, the site featured a banner ad giving voter registration information to overseas voters.

A Democrat, and a former lobbyist for the Sierra Club, Tanenbaum ran for a spot as an overseas delegate to the Democratic National Convention, but lost.