Offworld Voting
“From the International Space Station: I voted today
— Kate Rubins”
On-orbit Democracy Ops
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Offworld Voting
“From the International Space Station: I voted today
— Kate Rubins”
Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member... More by Keith Cowing
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That’s fun! I wonder if she voted absentee and it will be brought back to Earth on a future flight or if she did it electronically somehow.
Both. It’s technically an absentee vote, but Texas law allows people “in spaceflight” to send it electronically to Johnson Spaceflight Center and have NASA forward it to the county clerk’s office.
That seems to work, and more smoothly than some other legal deadlines people in space have encountered. There was the well-reported case of Jack Swigert on Apollo 13, who ended up needing a last minute extension because he hadn’t filed his taxes before the mission’s April 13 launch. (Which was quite understandable, given that he was a last-minute replacement and all the pre-launch work.) There was also a Russian cosmonaut (I don’t remember his name or the mission) whose family got some threatening letters from the military. Apparently, he was in the military reserves and neglected to show up for a mandatory training exercise. Because he was on the space station. Like Mr. Swigert’s case, that was easily and promptly cleared up. But there are some problems with legal dates and deadlines which spaceflight makes difficult. Fortunately, voting for an astronaut registered to vote in Texas isn’t one of them.