It’s inspiring to see how dedicated astronauts like Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams are to their civic duties, even while being so far from home. Voting from space truly highlights the importance of participating in elections, no matter where you are.
NASA’s system for voting from space is quite fascinating. They send a secure, password-protected PDF ballot to the astronauts, which they can fill out and send back to Earth. This ensures that their votes are counted just like any other citizen’s.
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| NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams inside the vestibule between the forward port on the International Space Station’s Harmony module and the Starliner spacecraft. |
The two American astronauts stuck on the International Space Station through February will still be able to cast their ballots while in orbit.
The two American astronauts stranded on the International Space Station through February said Friday they plan to vote in the November election from space.
“I sent down my request for a ballot today,” one of the astronauts, Butch Wilmore, said on a call with reporters on Friday afternoon. “It’s a very important role that we play as citizen including those elections, and NASA makes it very easy for us to do that.”
The other, Sunita Williams, agreed with the sentiment.
“It’s a very important duty that we have as citizens and looking forward to being able to vote from space, which is pretty cool,” she said.
Election officials in Harris County, Texas — where NASA’s Johnson Space Station is located — said they work with NASA to send astronauts a PDF with clickable boxes to make their choices. The PDF is password protected to ensure a secret ballot.
“Before sending the astronauts their ballot, it is transferred to a fillable document so that they can make their selections, save it, and send it back. A test ballot with a unique password is always sent first. Once they vote on their live ballot, it is returned, printed, and processed with other ballots,” said Rosio Torres-Segura, a spokesperson for the county clerk, said in an email to NBC News this week.
NASA says astronauts stuck in space will not return on Boeing capsule, will wait for SpaceX craft
Astronauts have been voting from space since 1997, the year the Texas legislature passed a bill allowing NASA employees to vote from space. David Wolf was the first American to vote from space while aboard the Mir Space station in 1997, the agency said, while NASA astronaut Kate Rubins voted from the International Space Station in the 2020 election.
Wilmore and Williams have been stuck on the International Space Station since early June after their spacecraft ran into several problems midflight for what was supposed to be a roughly eight-day mission. The astronauts will come back to Earth on a SpaceX capsule rather than on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they rode into orbit.
What do you think about this process? Does it change your perspective on the lengths people go to participate in democracy?