How do NASA astronauts vote from space?

The US presidential election is one of the most watched events not only by Americans but also by the whole world. Many Americans are heading to the polls — but some of those votes will have to travel a long way, even from beyond Earth. That’s the case for NASA astronauts working on the International Space Station (ISS). They will have to plan to cast their ballots from more than 400km above the Earth’s surface, a process that is complicated but also very interesting.

There is a system in place to ensure that American astronauts can still exercise their civic rights during this momentous event, although they will have to fill out an absentee ballot because there simply aren't any polling stations in space.

Astronauts like NASA’s Loral O’Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli personally cast their ballots in the Texas primary this March, using an electronic system designed to securely and accurately transmit the astronauts’ electronic ballots to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they are then sent to state offices for processing.

Although it may sound like a hassle, astronauts have expressed excitement about voting from space. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are expected to stay on the ISS longer than originally planned due to a problem with their Boeing Starliner spacecraft, so they won’t be able to vote in person like they have in past elections. However, they are excited and believe that voting from space will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

The need for astronauts to participate in elections in space was actually raised in the late 1990s, when NASA astronaut John Blaha (Mir space station) said he wanted to vote, but there was no safe and effective way to do so. It wasn't until a year later that the system was set up, in conjunction with the Texas state legislature, and David Wolf became the first US astronaut to vote from space in 1997.

There are some complications with the process, however. Marta Durham, an instructor in charge of the Crew Support Division at NASA, explains that absentee ballots must be signed by hand, not electronically, so they typically try to sign the ballots before the astronauts leave Earth. But in the case of Wilmore and Williams, because the astronauts were forced to stay on the space station longer than expected, they needed to print out the ballots in space, sign them, and then scan the corresponding signatures. The problem is that the scanner uses glasses, and glasses are not allowed on the ISS for safety reasons.

Eventually, Durham ran some tests and found that the iPads astronauts use on the station have cameras that work well enough as scanners—the only remaining challenge was getting the paper to lie flat in zero gravity. But eventually, both Wilmore and Williams were able to vote.