The Sainted Chris Christie.. Whoa, that’s a bit of a stretch.
America was founded not to be a "democracy", but rather to be an orderly ("well-regulated", per the sense of well-functioning established order) hierarchical representative republic. The Founders saw democracy as a disastrous, short-lived form of national government sure to end badly.
The America they operated within, and for which they established a particular charter of national government, was full of organizations at every level. We the People does not mean we as a collection of individuals, but We the People as a collection of collections. Formed groups of people were as important as the individual.
The Constitution establishes a hierarchy. A district's households via the male householder acting as the single representative elect a district representative to the national House of Representatives. An original national congressional district was apportioned by the State, the original constitution said "The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative."
Within each sovereign state of the federal republic, per the state's own individual charter, laws and traditions, the state's legislature (not the people directly!) appoints two senators and a number of presidential electors. The electors could not also be senators or representatives, the number of electors being equal to the total number of senators and representatives from that state.
Note that the state as a sovereign entity was fully respected, and permitted non-reviewable authority in how it selected its electors, and how it mapped its districts.