How Astronauts Cast Their Midterm Votes From the International Space Station

Voting in the Midterm elections required some Americans to overcome conditions far removed from a polling place, including zero gravity, subzero temperatures and isolation in remote villages reached by mail planes.

NASA astronaut Anil Menon explained in a social media video how he voted from the International Space Station. He used a computer in his room aboard the station to complete a voting form and send it electronically to Harris County, Texas. The station’s two other American crew members also voted, he said.

NASA says astronauts, like voters living overseas, must submit a federal postcard application to request an absentee ballot. The encrypted electronic ballots travel by satellite to NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico, then to the Johnson Space Center in Harris County before being forwarded to the county clerk. NASA says the ballot is accessible only to the astronaut and the clerk.

Astronauts have been able to vote in U.S. elections since 1997, after the Texas Legislature passed a law permitting it. The change followed astronaut John E. Blaha’s inability to vote in the 1996 general election.

Sources: The New York Times Politics.