NASA Reveals How Astronauts Will Vote From Space (nasa.gov) 50
AmiMoJo writes: Americans exercise their right to vote from all over the world, and for November's election, few ballots will have traveled as far as those cast by NASA astronauts living and working aboard the International Space Station. During earlier days of human spaceflight, astronauts would only visit space for days, or maybe weeks, at a time. Today, astronauts typically stay in space for six-month missions on the space station, increasing the odds of a spacefarer off the planet during an election. So how does one vote from space? Like other forms of absentee voting, voting from space starts with a Federal Postcard Application, or FPCA. It's the same form military members and their families fill out while serving outside of the U.S. By completing it ahead of their launch, space station crew members signal their intent to participate in an election from space. Because astronauts move to Houston for their training, most opt to vote as Texas residents. Of course, NASA's astronauts come from all over, so those wishing to vote as residents of their home states can work with their counties to make special arrangements to vote from space.
Once their FPCA is approved, the astronaut is almost ready to vote. Like many great things in space, voting starts with an experiment. The county clerk who manages elections in the astronaut's home county sends a test ballot to a team at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Then they use a space station training computer to test whether they're able to fill it out and send it back to the county clerk. After a successful test, a secure electronic ballot generated by the Clerk's office of Harris County and surrounding counties in Texas, is uplinked by Johnson's Mission Control Center to the voting crew member. An e-mail with crew member-specific credentials is sent from the County Clerk to the astronaut. These credentials allow the crew member to access the secure ballot. The astronaut will then cast their vote, and the secure, completed ballot is downlinked and delivered back to the County Clerk's Office by e-mail to be officially recorded. The clerk has their own password to ensure they are the only one who can open the ballot. It's a quick process, and the astronaut must be sure to submit it by 7 p.m. local time on Election Day if voting as a Texas resident.
Will astronauts vote in this election? Expedition 63/64 crew member Kate Rubins is assigned to a six-month mission launching Oct. 14, and will vote from space. It won't be her first time -- Rubins also cast her vote from the International Space Station during the 2016 election. With a SpaceX Crew Dragon scheduled to carry three additional U.S. crew members to the space station on Oct. 31 as part of the Crew-1 mission, Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker will make it to the space station just in time to cast their ballots there, as well. All three have filled out the paperwork and are ready to do so.
Once their FPCA is approved, the astronaut is almost ready to vote. Like many great things in space, voting starts with an experiment. The county clerk who manages elections in the astronaut's home county sends a test ballot to a team at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Then they use a space station training computer to test whether they're able to fill it out and send it back to the county clerk. After a successful test, a secure electronic ballot generated by the Clerk's office of Harris County and surrounding counties in Texas, is uplinked by Johnson's Mission Control Center to the voting crew member. An e-mail with crew member-specific credentials is sent from the County Clerk to the astronaut. These credentials allow the crew member to access the secure ballot. The astronaut will then cast their vote, and the secure, completed ballot is downlinked and delivered back to the County Clerk's Office by e-mail to be officially recorded. The clerk has their own password to ensure they are the only one who can open the ballot. It's a quick process, and the astronaut must be sure to submit it by 7 p.m. local time on Election Day if voting as a Texas resident.
Will astronauts vote in this election? Expedition 63/64 crew member Kate Rubins is assigned to a six-month mission launching Oct. 14, and will vote from space. It won't be her first time -- Rubins also cast her vote from the International Space Station during the 2016 election. With a SpaceX Crew Dragon scheduled to carry three additional U.S. crew members to the space station on Oct. 31 as part of the Crew-1 mission, Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker will make it to the space station just in time to cast their ballots there, as well. All three have filled out the paperwork and are ready to do so.
Holy cow! Such fraud! (Score:1)
"Um, I can't vote in person in this election. I'm in space. Send me my ballot."
Of all the excuses people use not to vote in person, this one has got to take the cake. I mean, who would believe you're in space going around the planet when quite clearly the Earth is flat.
Try harder next time, loser.
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Um, yeah, you're still going around it because it's a flat *circle*. Didn't you learn anything in geographstronomy?
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I can already imagine the rants from Trump complaining about thousands of astronaut ballots being forged and/or thrown into the trash.
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Flat Earth is better because the models [flatearthmodels.com] fit more nicely on a coffee table than a cumbersome globe.
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Actually it's more of a saddle shape. Get with the times!
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Duh. It's shaped like a banana [youtube.com]
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Shhh, it's only a model.
What if (Score:2)
Great. (Score:1, Troll)
So we spent likely millions in taxpayer dollars, to guarantee that a whopping half dozen votes are absolutely counted properly, with security and integrity remaining 100% intact.
Meanwhile, back here on Earth...a dumpster or seven will soon be "stuffed" with thousands of valid ballots while the dead cast their vote by mail.
Twice.
Re:Great. (Score:4, Interesting)
and U.S. prisoners are not allowed to vote, I'm lead to believe - the people most in need of political change are the least able to drive it. Kinda sad.
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Political prisoners voting is something both parties are against.
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It depends on the state. Some states you can petition for your right to be re-instated.
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In some states out-of-state billionaires will pay for your crimes so you can vote, with the state setting the market price.
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There are a few states changing that. Slowly.
Florida I believe allows those who served their sentence to vote, provided they paid off their debts. So most ex-cons can't vote, but there are more than a few that can.
Change happens slowly. Perhaps in 20 years when this goes to the supreme court to decide will something happen.
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A lot of people will be watching much more closely than normal
Regardless of findings, every competing viewpoint will experience examples of massaging/cherry-picking/outright statistical failure
There will be mass whining/screaming on all sides, regardless of outcome
Same as it ever was.
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...Same as it ever was.
Yeah.
Right.
Tell that to the unemployed millions suddenly on the dole that now aren't who watched a loved one get sick or die this year.
Oh yeah. Real fuckin' 2016 feel around here...
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It's the worst possible scenario! [youtu.be]
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Meanwhile, back here on Earth...a dumpster or seven will soon be "stuffed" with thousands of valid ballots while the dead cast their vote by mail.
Whatever you're smoking or drinking, it's clearly gone bad; I'd recommend trying something else.
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Meanwhile, back here on Earth...a dumpster or seven will soon be "stuffed" with thousands of valid ballots while the dead cast their vote by mail.
Whatever you're smoking or drinking, it's clearly gone bad; I'd recommend trying something else.
Narcissistic optimism will get you everywhere with the shallow masses fueling this social media of an election.
Why am I not surprised, that Reality seems as foreign to you, as citizens actually learning from their own history.
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Does it matter if there is voter fraud (there isn't, but hypothetically)?
Trump already signalled he won't accept the result if he loses and is assembling a private guard to help him keep power. You never know, with all the voter intimidation he might actually get the votes, or maybe just declare himself the winner at 10PM and all the mail in ballots still to be counted as fraudulent.
The plan is very clearly for actual votes to be irrelevant this time round.
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He has called for supporters to "monitor" polls, and told the Proud Boys to "stand by".
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He has called for supporters to "monitor" polls, and told the Proud Boys to "stand by".
And if needed, backup Reservists in Alaska serving the local crime watch could dispense with that, for fun.
Even the "well armed" Veterans in that group understand the fact that resources matter, and bullshit corrupt politics is not a reason to incite an actual Civil War with your own Brothers in Arms.
Leaders will come and go, and they are not all-powerful, nor are they meant to be. Hell, your local county voting officials wield more power right now, a sign that Democracy still has a heartbeat.
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I don't think he would succeed, but I'd also rather it didn't come down to a mini civil war between Trumpies and everyone else.
It's not going to be good for the country if Trump declares himself the winner at 10 PM and all mail-in ballots invalid, and then the legal fight against his stacked supreme court begins.
In any case when he eventually goes the law could do with some updates to make the transfer of power less reliant on good faith.
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Poll monitors are bad now? Even before the debate he was mentioning his poll watchers being denied. There is probably more to the story but part of an open election is that both sides can watch with independent monitors to ensure no shenanigans. There is probably more to it than just "go act like Black Panthers at the poll stations".
As far as the proud boys, are they really white supremacists? If so why does an afro-cuban head the organization? They officially deny being white supremacy.
I am hard pressed to
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Poll monitors from other countries, invited in and acting independently are good.
"""Poll monitors""" recruited by Trump turning up armed outside polling stations is voter suppression and is bad.
Come on, imagine if Obama had told the Black Panthers and AntiFa to "stand by" and then recruited some to go and set up armed "monitors" outside polling stations. Your head would have exploded.
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>""Poll monitors""" recruited by Trump turning up armed outside polling stations is voter suppression and is bad.
That is your characterization and strawman. Poll monitors include people from both sides of the election as well as independent monitors. From what I understand, he is complaining about his monitors being denied. Denying poll watchers of either side is bad. That is very different than denying bullying and suppression at the polls. Like I said, there is probably more to it than that as Trump li
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If you google "trump poll monitors" the first result explains that what he is asking for is a federal crime. He is complaining that his supporters are not being certified as official poll monitors, which normally takes months because they bother to investigate the person making the request to make sure they aren't just there for voter intimidation and meet the other local criteria, typically including stuff like having the right to vote in that area and not a felon.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/p... [cbsnews.com]
Also note
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>are not being certified as official poll monitors, which normally takes months
Like I said, there is probably more to it than what Trump is claiming. The point is that both sides are able to have watchers at the poll stations. There is a satellite polling station that register voters, request mail-in ballots, vote, and return mail in ballots. They denied Trumps poll watchers saying everything is above board. Was it? I don't know and I bet you don't either. If a lawsuit is filed and Trump is found to be i
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Well, no, usually neither side has people there. The people selected to be poll monitors are not chosen by the political parties or the candidates.
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Depends on the state. Where I live, for example, each side usually have representatives at a polling station. Poll workers, and poll watchers selected by the major parties is the norm. Independent just means both sides agree on that person which goes to your point of "takes months".
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Meanwhile, back here on Earth...a dumpster or seven will soon be "stuffed" with thousands of valid ballots while the dead cast their vote by mail.
Well, the country has ~200,000 new dead voters who might have opinions about its leadership.
Yes, yes, schadenfreude.
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Don't let facts get in the way your partisan bullshit.
I'd post the actual text of the Wiki article but the fancy new filters think its ascii swastikas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
But the bottom line is you're likely to get hit by lightning than find election fraud.
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Let's be honest here. NASA's main concern is that if we don't let the astronauts (and face it, cosmonauts too) vote, those on "Stand By" will rod [wikipedia.org] North America into molten slag.
That would be a "bad thing". Worse than anything that's ever happened in Las Vegas or Philadelphia.
Lots of lost jobs. The "best economy ever" would tank.
But SARS-CoV-2 would "miraculously disappear"...
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No not millions, stop exaggerating and blowing everything out of proportion like the media does.
And, like many things NASA does, this is a good experiment and demonstration for possible future use on earth.
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No not millions, stop exaggerating and blowing everything out of proportion like the media does.
Yeah, that damn "media" again...I mean where in the hell could the concept of wasteful spending ever have possibly been refreshed in my mind recently...
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
How is it secure? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no possible way they could have a secure electronic ballot . It's not possible to both transmit the ballot securely while at the same time ensuring that the conflicting objectives of vote secrecy and vote uniqueness. In order to ensure uniqueness (so the same person can't vote multiple times), there has to be a unique id (such as a token, username&password, or even voter id number, ssn, etc.) that is linked to a single human being. But, in order to to have a secret ballot, there has to be no way to link a specific person with the vote that was cast. With in person voting, or even mail-in voting, the two things are separate (using a separate inside envelope containing the ballot, and an outside envelope containing the voter id in the case of mail-in voting). With online voting over the Internet (and I'm counting the satellite link to the ISS as part of the internet for this discussion), they must necessarily be both provided in the same session.
In the article, it mentions that there's a secure link from the ISS to the computer on the ground. But what happens then? Is the ballot printed out and mailed in? If so, ground crew have the potential to see the ballot. Or, is it transmitted electronically, in which case, the above point about transmitting both the unique id and the vote.
Why didn't the astronauts just file an absentee ballot before leaving?
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Why didn't the astronauts just file an absentee ballot before leaving?
It's quite possible that those ballots weren't ready when they departed. Even though everyone knew who the (presumed) candidates would be, they weren't official until after the primaries with the additional issue that every state has their own process and time-line, etc ... Remember there are more than just the Presidential candidates to consider on the ballots.
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https://medium.com/digital-dip... [medium.com] is a pretty good article showing some problems with online voting.
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Given there are only 6 astronauts up there on the ISS, and I think only one of them is actually eligible to vote (i.e., is American), I think this works more or less.
Basically there are at most 6 people who could vote in any given year, and I'd be hard pressed to imagine any sort of voting shenanigans going on. I would expect the astronauts to be the height of professionalism so even if there are flaws in the process, everyone who votes would still respect the intent and process and not hack each other's vo
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Secrecy can be ensured by deleting the database that connected the unique voter IDs to their real identities after the electronic ballots have been created. This analogous to the ballot officials opening and discarding the outer envelope. Theoretically those officials could keep notes or put the ballots through an X-ray machine, but that can be prevented by having neutral observers.
Why didn't the astronauts just file an absentee ballot before leaving?
Because not all candidates and ballot measures have been decided on before they left.
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Nonsense. This is easily handled. Most of the 'keep black people from voting' systems used in southern US states already handle this case.
You only permit access to the voting terminal based on an existing ID. You only let the voting terminal process one voting form per session. You don'
I guess that works (Score:2)
When I read the headline, I was hoping the solution would involve a remote controlled robot holding a pencil over a ballot, then securing the ballot and dropping it in a mailbox (or ballot box if available). This method might work too.
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1 person (Score:2)
Are there any other Americans in space right now, other than Chris Cassidy?
No need (Score:3)
The Russian cosmonauts already voted for them, don't bother.