American astronauts may be absent from the Earth’s surface, but that doesn’t exclude them from taking part in the national election process. In 1997, astronauts registered to vote in Texas got the right to vote from space because of a bill passed by the Texas Legislature. David Wolf was the first American to vote from space in 1997, and in an interview with the Atlantic he recalled how he felt during the experience.
“I voted alone up in space, very alone, the only English speaker up there, and it was nice to have an English ballot, something from America,” Wolf said. “It made me feel closer to the Earth and like the people of earth actually cared about me up there.”
Kate Rubins is currently the only American voter not on the planet, and she voted from the International Space Station last week using a process that hasn’t changed much since 1997.
Rubins’ ballot information traveled from space to earth the way most data from the space station does, via NASA’s Space Network, which is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The secure electronic ballot is generated by the appropriate county clerk’s office in Texas, uplinked by NASA’s Johnson Space Center Mission Control Center and an email with credentials specific to the crew member is sent as well, allowing only the designated crew member to access the ballot. Astronauts fill out their ballots and email them back to the county clerk, via a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite to a ground antenna at the White Sands Complex in Las Cruces, New Mexico. From there, the ballot goes through Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center and then back to the original county clerk, who opens the file and transfers the astronauts selections to a physical paper ballot.
This isn’t the first time Rubins has voted from space, the timing of one of her previous mission put her off-planet during the 2016 elections as well.
In a video recorded by NASA prior to her departure for the space station, Rubins comments on the importance of voting and concludes the video by saying, "and if we can do it from space, then I believe folks can do it from the ground too."