Three NASA Astronauts Vote in Midterms From the Space Station

Three NASA astronauts living on the International Space Station voted in the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 3 without leaving orbit. Anil Menon said he, Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins each filled out an electronic ballot and sent it to election officials, according to Space.com.

Menon announced it in a post on X that morning. He wrote that all three U.S. crew members had the privilege of voting from the station and that the ballots were sent securely.

A voting booth in a crew cabin

Menon's post included a 29-second video in which he wears an "I voted" sticker and shows his "voting booth." Space.com reported that it is simply his room on the station. Inside is his computer, where he filled out an electronic form and sent it to Harris County, Texas.

Most NASA astronauts register to vote in Harris County, according to Space.com. It is home to Johnson Space Center in Houston, the agency's human spaceflight hub.

How a ballot travels from orbit to a county clerk

The process involves several steps, according to an astronaut-voting explainer from NASA that Space.com quoted. As with any American away from home, an astronaut can fill out a Federal Post Card Application to request an absentee ballot.

After an astronaut completes the electronic ballot aboard the station, NASA says, the document travels through its Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System to a ground antenna at the agency's White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico. From there, NASA transfers it to the Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center and then to the county clerk responsible for casting it.

To protect the vote's integrity, NASA says the ballot is encrypted and can be accessed only by the astronaut and the clerk.

How voting from space began

Americans have been able to vote from space since 1997, when Texas passed a law allowing it, Space.com reported. The first person to use it was NASA astronaut David Wolf, who voted from Russia's Mir space station that year. The International Space Station did not receive its first crew until November 2000.

Who is aboard the station

Delaney and Watkins launched to the station on Oct. 1 on SpaceX's Crew-13 mission. Menon has been aboard since mid-July, after arriving on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The three share the orbiting laboratory with four others: Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and cosmonauts Anna Kikina, Pyotr Dubrov and Sergey Teteryatnikov. Kutryk and Teteryatnikov are part of Crew-13, while Dubrov and Kikina flew with Menon on the Soyuz.

Why it matters: voting rights travel with U.S. citizens

The episode shows that Americans serving far from home, in this case about as far as a U.S. citizen can be, can still take part in elections through the same absentee system available to others abroad. The astronauts' ballots go to a local county clerk, like any other absentee vote, rather than through a special channel, according to NASA's explainer as quoted by Space.com.

The sources do not say how the astronauts voted or how many ballots were involved beyond the three crew members.

Around Prague, based on reporting by Space.com