The forefathers lived in a time before mass media and communication and could not have envisioned things like PR and propaganda on our modern scale (though they certainly knew what biased journalism was).

They lived when news and correspondence took days, weeks, months, to be transmitted, and they never expected that electors from all over the country in so many different regions and subcultures would be swept up by the same fad, or be influenced by the same enticements, or owe favors to the same people.

They also lived in a time when voters had to be landowning white men — and while there are a million things profoundly fucked-up-wrong with that state of affairs, it did ensure that more often than not,

(1) all voters would be invested in the commonwealth with something to lose, and

(2) all voters were educated to within an inch of their lives, and thus they knew a hawk from a handsaw, no matter which way the wind was blowing.