The Anti-Federalists weren’t buying any of it. George Mason, the Virginian delegate who had refused at the last minute to sign the Constitution, called the Electoral College a “deception” that deluded the people into thinking they were choosing the president themselves. In one Anti-Federalist newspaper, a writer identified as “A Columbian Patriot” claimed that the president would be elected by “an aristocratic junto” that could combine easily across state lines and install “the most convenient instrument for despotic sway.”45
December 24, 2020. Page 78.
