Election Day comes around, and you head to your polling place or drop your ballot in the mailbox. But what if you were circling the planet at the time, living on a space station for months? There's no mailbox in orbit, and no one is delivering paper ballots by rocket.
Astronauts vote anyway, and they've been doing it for years. American astronauts on the International Space Station receive a secure electronic ballot, fill it out in orbit, and send it back down to Earth, where it's emailed to their county clerk. The system exists because of a Texas law passed in 1997.
The Astronaut Who Couldn't Vote
The story starts with astronaut John Blaha. In 1996 he was living aboard the Russian space station Mir, and he asked for permission to vote in the presidential election. NASA came up with a plan to let him vote electronically.
Then came a snag. The Texas Secretary of State pointed out that the state had no provision for any electronic voting, so the plan was stopped. Since most astronauts live in Texas and are registered to vote there, this was a real problem.
A Law Written for Space
The following year, Texas fixed it. Governor George W. Bush signed a bill, first sponsored by Representative Mike Jackson, whose district included Johnson Space Center, that allowed astronauts to vote electronically.
The first person to use the new system was astronaut David Wolf. While aboard Mir, he voted in Houston's 1997 local elections. Seven years later, in 2004, Leroy Chiao became the first American to vote for president from space, while on board the International Space Station.
How a Space Ballot Works
Why not just mail it? Delivering paper ballots to and from a space station, the way you might for a soldier stationed overseas, would cost far too much. So some astronauts vote electronically, while others pass their choices to a trusted person on the ground.
The process starts on the ground. Before launch, astronauts fill out the Federal Post Card Application, the same form used by military members stationed overseas. When the election arrives, Johnson Space Center sends up a secure electronic ballot, and the astronaut's local county clerk emails them credentials to open it.
The astronaut fills out the ballot, it's downlinked to Earth, and then it's emailed to the county clerk to be counted. Since 2004, astronauts aboard the station have voted in all but one presidential election. Astronaut Kathleen Rubins voted from the station twice, in 2016 and 2020.
Not every astronaut is a Texas voter, either. Andrew Morgan was registered in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, and county officials worked with NASA so he could vote from orbit in the 2019 local elections.
Other Countries, Other Methods
Americans weren't the first to vote off the planet. In 1971, the crew of Soyuz 11 broadcast their votes from the Soviet space station Salyut 1 in an election for a Communist Party congress. A news report at the time called them the first votes ever cast from space.
Russian cosmonauts today usually vote by proxy, naming someone on the ground to cast their ballot. During a 2020 referendum, Moscow allowed online voting, so cosmonaut Anatoli Ivanishin voted electronically from the station. French astronaut Thomas Pesquet voted from space in 2017.
So if anyone ever says they're too busy to vote, here's a fun fact to mention: some people have managed it while circling the entire planet.
