Having the legislature appoint electors for the presidency was the done thing in South Carolina for every presidential election up through 1860. It used to be more common elsewhere, but the increasing acceptance of the white man's popular democracy as the nineteenth century went on made legislative appointments seem increasingly out of step with the times. In a way, that's what SC was going for. They held on to the elite-directed eighteenth century politics style really hard, trying to recapture their dream of the English country gentry (but with slaves) perfected a century later in the New World. I've read SC politicians saying they don't expect their voters to ever think much about politics, just which leading man of the community they preferred. The main exception is that they liberalized the franchise a bit early.

Calhoun's the obvious go-to guy when talking about antebellum anti-majoritarianism, but it's worthwhile to keep in mind that in the SC context Calhoun is frequently a moderate and that the sole minority which concerns him (or really any of these guys) is white slaveholders. Where King Numbers doesn't seem so perilous to slavery, or might be useful in advancing the peculiar institution, principles frequently change. Nor does SC-style anti-majoritarianism often play well outside the state in the later antebellum. The dominant political style is usually Jacksonian herrenvolk (master race) democracy.