The first astronauts to vote from space were actually cosmonauts (people who are trained by the Russian Space Agency to travel into space), voting in 1971 for the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from the Salyut 1 Space Station.
Later, three more cosmonauts voted in the 1989 Soviet parliamentary elections from the Mir Space Station, which operated in Low Earth Orbit from 1986 to 2001. But their votes were not secret – they simply told ground control their choice over normal communications. Such public voting may have been great publicity for those who wished to have endorsements from up high (above their heads).
But what of democratic voting using secure ballots? In November 1996 the USA held a presidential election with candidates Bill Clinton, Bob Dole and Ross Perot. John Blaha was a US citizen and Texan resident who wanted to vote. He had one minor problem: he was an astronaut on board the Mir Space Station.
No problem, said NASA, we’ll allow you to cast your vote using secure communications to the ground. But the Secretary of State of Texas intervened. Texas had no provision in its electoral statutes for electronic voting. It would not be legal for Blaha to vote. So, much to his frustration, Blaha was prevented from voting.
Prompted by this unfortunate state of affairs, the following year, in 1997, a new bill was signed into law by Governor George W Bush, explicitly permitting voting from space. Astronaut David Wolf was the first to vote – this time for a local election in Texas.
Astronauts have been able to vote from space ever since, and most have done so. Most move to Texas for their training, and so, the new legislation enabled them to vote legally. For residents of other states, special collaboration with NASA can still permit them to vote.
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But how do they actually do it? Before launch, they must register a Federal Post Card Application, as used by all military personnel when overseas. When it’s time to vote, NASA’s Johnson Space Center first transmits a test ballot supplied by the relevant county clerk.
The astronaut uses a training computer to fill it out and check that it is received correctly back on Earth. Then the real ballot with credentials provided by the county clerk is securely sent to the astronaut’s own computer, who fills it out electronically and securely transmits it back to NASA.
Today, this transmission is routed via NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS), which sends them on to the White Sands Complex, New Mexico. From there, landlines transmit the ballot to Mission Control in Johnson Space Center, which then emails the ballot as a secure password-protected file to the county clerk, who can officially register the vote.
STS-86 crewmember David Wolf, the first American to vote in space – Photo credit: NASA
It’s just as well that astronauts can vote, because the US presidential election to be held in November of 2024 is likely to happen before stranded astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are able to get home.
Launched on 5 June 2024, on what was supposed to be only an eight-day mission, issues with their Boeing Starliner spacecraft have resulted in the pair spending months in space. And they’ve still got a while longer as SpaceX is expected to return the stranded astronauts next year, in February of 2025.
The only question is… did they submit their Federal Post Card Applications to vote before the launch? If they didn’t, then they may still not be allowed to cast their ballots.
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