Well that ought to be good news; but the news reports are that Republican-dominated legislatures are manipulating law and circumstances to legislate advantage to a small, privileged set of people (themselves and their backers) rather than distributing EC votes “more in line with the wishes of the voters of the state.”

And this is the basic, historical difference between democratic governance and republican governance. This fundamental, philosophical difference goes all the way back to the Constitutional convention, where the Hamiltonian “republican”-oriented framers — still caught up in 18th-century royalty (or a privileged class), were believing that the Jeffersonian common people are incapable of governing themselves, and that they actually need wiser leaders — royal or privileged — to oversee governance.