American astronauts in space can vote too. Here’s how they do it

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They are the furthest-flung American voters on Earth. Actually, not on Earth.

Of the 10 people currently in space, three are Chinese citizens aboard the Tiangong space station. Three are Russian crew members on the International Space Station, and the other four — Butch Wilmore, Sunita Williams, Don Pettit and Nick Hague — are Americans, also aboard the ISS.

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Two of those astronauts, Pettit and Hague, knew before they left Earth that they would be in space on Nov. 5, U.S. Election Day. For the other two, it came as something of a surprise. Williams and Wilmore were test-flying the Boeing Starliner in June on a mission that was only supposed to last a week, but problems with the spacecraft forced them into an extended stay on the ISS. They’re not due back on Earth until early next year.

Still, they’re voting. “It’s a very important duty that we have as citizens,” Williams said during a call with reporters in September, adding she was “looking forward to being able to from space, which is pretty cool.”

“NASA makes it very easy for us to do that, so we’re excited about that opportunity,” Wilmore said on the call, adding that he requested his absentee ballot that day.

So, how does one vote from space? It turns out that the process is not unlike that for U.S. citizens and military personnel who are overseas during an election. It involves requesting a Federal Post Card Application, which can then be printed out and mailed back home.

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Of course, since mail from space is particularly unreliable, the form has to be sent back electronically. In a recent blog post, NASA explained that ballot information flows from the space station through the agency’s Near Space Network, which communicates with missions that are less than 1.9 million kilometres away. (The space station is actually very close to Earth, just 435 kilometres up.)

The ballot is transmitted to a ground antenna in New Mexico, which transfers it to Mission Control in Houston and then on to the county clerk responsible for casting the ballot. To preserve the vote’s integrity, the ballot is encrypted and accessible only by the astronaut and the clerk.

In 2020, U.S. astronaut Kate Rubins created her own voting booth on the ISS by closing the door on her crew quarters and putting up a hand-written sign: “ISS Voting Booth.”

“It’s our small little area where we sleep and have our computer,” she said. “It’s a private area on the space station and it seems like it would be about the right size for a voting booth back down at home.”

It was her second orbital ballot. She had also been on the space station during the presidential election in 2016.

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Back in 1996, John Blaha, aboard the Russian space station Mir, had asked if he could vote in the presidential election that year. But officials in the Texas Secretary of State’s office at the time said they had no provisions for voting by e-mail or from space.

The Texas Legislature later passed a bill that allowed NASA astronauts to cast ballots from orbit. The first American to vote from space was David Wolf, who was aboard Mir in 1997 and cast a ballot in a local election. Seven years later, Leroy Chiao became the first American to vote in a presidential election from orbit, aboard the ISS in 2004.

But in an echo of the early days of the space race, Russians had already beat America to the punch, and by a good many decades too.

In 1971, the three-man crew of Soyuz 11 broadcast their votes from the Salyut 1 space station in the election for the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, though it was obviously not a secret ballot.

America, the only nation to send explorers to another celestial body, has never had anyone on the moon or en route during a presidential election. But in 1970, Jack Swigart, who had been a last-minute replacement to the crew of Apollo 13, realized thousands of kilometres from Earth that he had not filed his taxes before he left.

“Uh oh; have you guys completed your income tax?” he asked Mission Control. “I didn’t get mine filed. And this is serious.”

Someone from the ground chimed in: “Is it true that Jack’s income tax return was going to be used to buy the ascent fuel for the (lunar module)?” Eventually, they reassured him that, while he was not technically in another country, he did qualify as a U.S. citizen abroad, giving him an extension to file his taxes late but penalty-free.

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