Why was it significant that voters rather than state legislatures ratified the Constitution of the United States?

The Preamble to the United States Constitution opens with the phrase We the People. This is a nod to the concept of popular sovereignty, which means that the citizens of a nation have the right to govern. With this in mind, the ratification of the document that opens with those words should be in the hands of the voters. Allowing the Constitution to be ratified by the citizens would give more credence to the document and encourage popular participation in the new government.

A cynic would point to a more practical reason for excluding the state legislatures from ratifying the Constitution. Under the Articles of Confederation, which would be replaced by the Constitution, the states had much more power and influence than the federal government. This meant that state lawmakers had a lot to lose in the ratification of the Consitution. The idea of having them vote on the new law of the land was certainly a conflict of interest that would have certainly ensured the Constitution would not have been ratified.