Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, September 29th, 1970, a Senate vote falls six votes shy.

Okay, Senate votes fall shy all the time, so what were they voting on?

They were voting on an amendment to the

Constitution that would have scrapped effectively the Electoral College and

replaced it with a much simpler system based on the popular vote. No more

538 electoral votes. A huge change in the

structure of our democracy. More importantly a real sliding doors moment for

Nate Silver. No more 538. No more me. I don't know where I would have worked from 2015 to 2019. It's always about me.

And who knows what Steve Kornaki's job would look like without all that electoral math.

He is our guest for this episode.

Hello Steve Kornaki, National Political

Correspondent for NBC news and MS NBC. Thank you for joining us. We've been trying to get you on the show for a while,

so I'm really glad you could do it. I had never quite thought of it the way you were just describing it there,

but yeah, the implications for what we do

without the state-based system.

I'm shut it.

What would your map look like?

Well, look, Steve, this is an old journalistic trick is whenever you encounter an interesting

story, the first question to ask is, what would this mean for me?

You know?

...