Texas Fun Fact | Texas Elections & Space History

Texas Fun Fact: Some Texas Ballots Have Traveled Through Space

NASA astronauts have voted as Texas residents from orbit, sending encrypted electronic absentee ballots back to Earth for county processing.

Most Texans cast their ballots at a polling place or through an authorized mail-in process. But for some Texas residents, voting has involved a journey hundreds of miles above Earth.

In March 2024, NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli voted as Texas residents while aboard the International Space Station.

Their ballots followed a remarkable route home.

According to NASA, the electronic absentee ballots were transmitted from the space station through a ground antenna in New Mexico to Mission Control in Houston. From there, the ballots were forwarded to the appropriate county clerk’s office for processing.

NASA describes the process as encrypted, with access to the completed ballot restricted to the astronaut and the county clerk.

This is not a public online voting system. It is a specially arranged absentee-voting process that allows eligible astronauts to participate in elections while working in orbit.

And Texas’s connection to voting from space goes back even further.

In 1997, astronaut David Wolf became the first American to vote from space while aboard the Russian space station Mir.

It’s a fascinating intersection of Texas election administration, American space exploration and the right to participate in government.

Even hundreds of miles above Earth, a Texas ballot can still find its way home.

Source

• NASA — How NASA Astronauts Vote from Space Aboard International Space Station

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