There are no excuses for not voting – not even if you are in space. Just ask the four American astronauts who are currently on the International Space Station ISS.
It is a civic duty. It is the right thing to do, said Suni Williams, the space station's commander, in an interview a few weeks ago.
According to Williams, all four plan to vote in the American election and have requested ballots to be able to vote remotely.
It works like this: the astronauts fill in their ballots, which are then uploaded to the space station's computers. The encrypted ballots are then sent via satellite to ground stations in the state of New Mexico, which forward them to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. NASA then sends the ballots electronically to the election authority in Texas.
American astronauts have been voting from space since 1997.
