I haven’t been as active about Polaris for the past week. This is because stopping Trump is a much, much higher priority. Here’s a link to a Google Docs spreadsheet for electors to contact and how.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MPq_wqqehmytW8SJqtpFFRKdbo7jMEBTwLDSb2Brp6Y/edit#gid=0

There are also protests taking place, and a strong push to sever ties with anyone supporting and promoting Trump. A lot of people are calling out when the media tries to normalize Trump’s behavior. Some are proclaiming that we can survive a Trump presidency because we handled Nixon and Reagan.

That’s not true. Even if it was, a lot of harm can be done in four years. There is much, much more at stake than most people realize.

It all comes down to Russia.

Great Britain supposedly voted to leave the European Union recently. The United States supposedly voted to elect Trump as president. Bulgaria supposedly elected Rumen Radev as president. Marine Le Pen is a strong candidate in France’s elections.

Every single one of these situations has a common theme: they support Russia and Russian interests.

Trump has stated that the U.S. should pull out of NATO, and is so closely tied to Russia and Putin that he was made an honorary Russian Cossack just two days ago. Great Britain supposedly choosing to leave the European Union severs ties with other European countries. Radev and Le Pen are both strongly pro-Russia, and Le Pen is also against NATO.

Think back. During this year’s U.S. election, Russia was caught hacking into voting machines to grab data and search for potential breaches. They have a reason for that. At bare minimum, it means they were gathering data that Trump’s campaign could use. More likely, they were looking for ways to compromise the system.

Russia didn’t need to affect every single voting machine. It only needed to affect machines in swing states, and only enough to get Trump into a winning position for the electoral college. They didn’t need to worry about the popular vote because the popular vote isn’t what we use to elect presidents.

If you think Putin rigging elections of foreign countries is paranoid, remember that he rigged Russia’s elections to be as high as 146% voter turnout in some areas.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/05/putin-united-russia-election

For the past few years, Obama has strongly resisted Putin’s attempts to seize land and dominate other countries. Clinton would have continued that path. Trump is Putin’s opportunity to make the U.S. abandon its obligations so that Russia can do whatever it wants with no risk from the world’s current strongest superpower. Hampering NATO and the EU further aids his agenda.

This isn’t about partisan party politics anymore. This isn’t “Democrats don’t like Republicans” anymore. Russia is attacking the U.S. through its elections system and stoking existing divisions in an attempt to keep the rest of the world divided and distracted from dealing with Putin.

Contact your electors. Protest. Do anything you can. It is especially important for Republicans, including ones that supported Trump’s run for president, to get the electoral college to do the right thing.

P.S. – Pence is fiercely anti-LGBT. This aligns with Putin’s anti-LGBT attitude. This is not a coincidence.