Voting From Space

[Deepwater6]

http://www.space.com/18341-astronaut-vote-election-space-station.html

 

This Space.Com article outlines how American space station residents can go about voting. This will be interesting in the far future when space hotels become popular and affordable.

[CraigD]

Interesting – I saw something about this on TV news, and assumed all the folk on the ISS eligible to vote in today’s US elections would use this voting method. But the linked Space.com article notes that there are only 2 US astronauts on the ISS now - Sunita Williams and Kevin Ford – and both cast regular absentee ballots before they traveled to the ISS, in July and October of this year, respectively.

 

So the article’s statement headline statement, “NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station have the option of voting in tomorrow's (Nov. 6) presidential election from orbit, hundreds of miles above their nearest polling location”, isn’t really true, as, like all of us, Williams and Ford can’t vote twice in the same election.

 

The article notes that astronaut David Wolf used this method in 1997 to vote from orbit aboard Russia’s now-deorbited Mir space station. I’ve not seen any mention of whether it’s been used since then. :QuestionM

[Deepwater6]

Yes since 1997. I almost got the impression from the article that some in space didn't vote. I would be surprised if they didn't. NASA is big on image and that would be their civic duty, but I guess NASA can't make them vote if they choose not to. Then again they could have all pre voted like the current crew did. I'll have to do some more research on that.