Many who voted in the midterm elections faced minor annoyances like getting up early, taking time off work or standing in long lines.
But spare a thought for those who confronted unusual challenges: voting in zero gravity, or in subzero temperatures, or from remote villages that get their mail from planes.
In a video posted on social media, Dr. Anil Menon, a NASA astronaut, described the steps he took to vote from the International Space Station. His room aboard the station doubled as his voting booth, he said. There, he used his computer to fill out a voting form, which he sent electronically to Harris County, Texas.
The two other Americans aboard the station also voted, he said.
Astronauts, like overseas voters, must fill out a federal post card application to request an absentee ballot, according to NASA. The electronic ballots, which are encrypted, are routed through satellites to the agency’s White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, N.M. The ballots are then sent to the Johnson Space Center in Harris County, Texas, and finally to the county clerk for filing.
“To preserve the vote’s integrity, the ballot is encrypted and accessible only by the astronaut and the clerk,” NASA says on its website.
Astronauts have voted in U.S. elections since 1997, when the Texas Legislature passed a bill allowing them do so. The previous year, the astronaut John E. Blaha had found himself unable to vote in the 1996 general election.
The astronaut David Wolf became the first American to vote from space while aboard the Mir Space Station in 1997, according to NASA, participating in local elections in Houston.
The United States operates three research stations in Antarctica: the McMurdo, Amundsen-Scott South Pole and Palmer Stations. Americans living there can request absentee ballots like other citizens living overseas or serving in the military.
The U.S. Antarctic Program’s participant guide warns those hoping to vote from the continent that they must arrange to receive an absentee ballot and should “keep in mind the uncertainties of mail in and out of Antarctica; you may not receive the ballot in time to vote, or your ballot may not be received by your election authorities in time to be counted.” Mail from the United States to Antarctica is routed through New Zealand and usually takes two or three weeks to arrive, according to the guide.
In past elections, some voters in Antarctica have been able to fax their ballots. Corrine Morse, who was based at McMurdo Station in 2016, told The Washington Post that she and about 100 others used a fax machine to send in their absentee ballots in that year’s presidential election.
In Alaska, some voters in remote villages also need to contend with mail services that can take weeks. Many in the state vote early at a polling place or request an in-person absentee ballot.
More than 80 percent of Alaskan communities require “creative solutions” to receive their mail, the state wrote in January in a brief filed to the Supreme Court as it debated Mississippi’s mail-in ballot law. Those solutions included “airplanes, helicopters, hovercraft and other modes of nontraditional transportation.”
Extreme weather could make the process unreliable, the brief said, adding that when it came to in-person voting in the state, poll workers could be difficult to recruit in remote communities.
