US astronaut votes from space

A United
States astronaut on Thursday cast her ballot from the International Space
Station, conducting her duty despite being 408 kilometres (253 miles) above the
Earth’s surface.

“From the
International Space Station: I voted today,” Kate Rubins, who started a six-month
mission aboard the space station last week, said on NASA’s Twitter account.

In the
post, Rubins can be seen floating in zero-gravity in front of a paper sign that
reads “ISS voting booth”.

The process
is a form of absentee voting, Rubins and NASA explained, according to AFP.

An
electronic ballot was sent to the ISS via email from the Harris County clerk’s
office, home to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

The ballot was
then filled out by Rubins and sent back to the clerk’s office.

This is not
the first time Rubins cast her vote from orbit, casting her vote for the
2016 elections from the ISS as well.

The US Congress
had passed a legislation, making voting possible from space, in 1997.

“We
consider it an honour to be able to vote from space,” Rubins said in a video
prior to her October 14 launch, along with two Russian cosmonauts, from the Russian-operated
Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

“If we can
do it from space then I believe folks can do it from the ground too,” she
added.

Three other
American astronauts were also slated to vote from space but their trip to the
ISS, originally scheduled for October 31, was delayed.