It used to be in most states that the legislatures themselves would directly allocate their state’s EVs, instead of by popular vote. The legislature would say, “all of our electoral votes go to this candidate”, or “fine, we’ll give six of our electoral votes to this candidate and four to the other.” In 1788, only three out of eleven states (Rhode Island and North Carolina hadn’t yet ratified the Constitution, and thus were technically not part of the Union) held popular votes to allocate electors, iirc.