Brian Ler on WNYC.

Now we're joined by our colleague over at Radio Lab, Latif Nassar, co-host of Radio Lab,

who is giving the Radio Lab treatment to a controversial aspect of our presidential

elections that's particularly relevant right now as everyone obsesses over the swing states.

What is it? It's the electoral college. Why is it that voters in Pennsylvania, North Carolina,

Arizona, or whatever states or close calls in a given year, seemingly hold all the

power. Why are the candidates visiting multiple cities in Michigan, but rarely spending time in,

say, the big four population states of California, Texas, Florida, and New York? Why do voters in some

states literally have more say than the voters and others?

This is how Hillary Clinton and Al Gore won the popular vote but lost their elections, right?

Doesn't a democracy imply one person, one vote? Radio Lab's Electoral College episode is out today.

It's called the Unpopular Vote.

And none other than co-host, Latoff Nasser, is here with the story of the origin of the electoral college,

how it affects our elections today compared to, say, 1789.

And the episode is also about one man who has spent his career attempting to abolish it. Hey, Latif, welcome back to the

Brian Laird Show. Oh, thanks so much for having me, Brian. I'm so happy to be here. We have a couple of

clips to play from the episode, but set this up for us a little. First, who's your protagonist,

this person who has made at their mission to abolish the electoral college. Yeah, well, so he,

um, we, the story, story centers on this guy, Birchby. Birchby was in ambitious young Democratic

senator from Indiana, uh, in the 60s and 70s. He was charming and handsome. He got called the

Kennedy of the Midwest. Uh, he. He starts in the Senate as a young

whippersnapper at age 34 and kind of almost by accident, he winds up the chair of the subcommittee

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