Williams and Wilmore arrived on the ISS on June 5 via the Boeing Starliner craft but were unable to return as planned. They will return home in February, so they are unable to vote as usual.
Instead, they are allowed to cast absentee ballots under a 1997 Texas law, which appears to be unique to the state and made possible by NASA’s Space Communication and Navigation Program (SCaN).
These election rules pertain to space station crew members who reside in Texas and are not earthbound during Election Day or the early election period.
The process, as outlined by NASA:
- Ballots are requested and filled out onboard
- Ballots are encrypted and uploaded via the spacecraft’s onboard computer system
- Ballots are routed through satellites
- Las Cruces, N.M., terminals receive the ballot
- Ballots are transmitted to Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston
- JSC sends the ballot to the appropriate Texas county clerk
“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,” he told the magazine. “It made me feel closer to the Earth and like the people of Earth actually cared about me up there.”
Prior to that, there was no provision for Texans to vote by electronic means. Besides, most U.S. astronauts had not spent extended time in space or during an election season.
State Rep. (later a senator) Mike Jackson of La Porte introduced the bill that changed it, and the 75th Legislature voted yes to HB 841, “Relating to voting procedures for persons on a space flight.” Then-Gov. George W. Bush signed it into law June 18, 1997.
