Can Boeing Starliner astronauts vote from the ISS?

In November, eligible U.S. voters will go to the polls to cast their vote for president. But what about the astronauts on the ISS? Let’s break down the issue of whether Boeing Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams can vote from space — ISS astronauts legally can vote from Space Station, but because theirs is a mission extension, it’s more complicated than it seems. But I have definitive answer in an email from NASA.

Can Boeing Starliner astronauts vote in November?

• A quick update on Boeing Starliner’s status

• Texas does allow voting from space

• Here’s the ins and outs of how it works

• Okay, enough history, can they vote???

A quick update on Boeing Starliner’s status

Here’s the quick summary of where we are with Boeing Starliner: Butch and Suni will return in February 2025, aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. Boeing Starliner is scheduled for an autonomous undocking and re-entry on September 6 at 6:04 PM ET, and it will take about six hours for undocking, re-entry, and touchdown at White Sands.

Crew-9 is currently scheduled for launch no earlier than September 24, and it’s important to note this will not be delayed by the grounding of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The FAA grounded the Falcon 9 on August 28 after a first-stage booster failed its landing — after a routine Starlink mission the booster landed on the droneship, but then tipped over as visible flames billowed from the rocket’s base.

The FAA launches routine mishap investigations after any problems with the mission profile, so the rocket was grounded — but just for two days. The FAA announced yesterday that the Falcon 9 would be able to return to flight, and they already have had two successful launches just 65 minutes apart in the early hours of August 31.

NASA also announced this week that the two crewmembers of Crew-9 would be NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, and Butch and Suni will assume the other two crewmembers’ duties for the six-month mission. The two astronauts pulled off the flight were women (Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson), so NASA is going to probably take some heat for this but it does make sense.

NASA has a deal with Russia to fly an integrated crew (NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson is part of the Soyuz crew on the ISS right now), so it was easy to guess that the cosmonaut would stay on the crew. And adjusting from a four person crew to a two person this close to launch isn’t easy, and Nick Hague has the most experience with spaceflight. It’s not ideal but it is what it is.

Texas does allow voting from space

But now let’s talk about voting. In 1997, Texas passed a law that allowed astronauts to vote from space. NASA’s astronaut program is based at Johnson Space Center in Houston, so that’s where the astronauts live, work, and are registered to vote. Some astronauts are registered to vote elsewhere, and NASA has worked with their local county election offices as well. It’s also important to note that astronauts can also submit an absentee ballot, voting before they leave, if time allows (normal ISS missions are around 6 months, and an absentee ballot usually isn’t available six months before an election.)

Sounds simple, right? That should cover it. Well, it’s a lot more complicated than it seems.

In 1996, astronaut John Blaha was serving aboard the space station Mir, and he requested permission to vote in the 1996 presidential election. NASA made the plan for Blaha to vote electronically, but the Texas Secretary of State put a stop to it because there was no provision in Texas law to vote from space. But the next year, then-governor George W. Bush signed a law allowing astronauts to vote from space. It was first used in 1997 by David Wolf, also aboard Mir, to vote in local Houston elections.

But HERE is where it gets complicated for Butch and Suni.

Here’s the ins and outs of how it works

In order to vote from space, astronauts have to fill out what’s called the Federal Post Card Application or FPCA. It’s basically the same application that members of the military have to file to vote overseas to vote absentee. This is the tricky part though: For astronauts, it HAS to be submitted in person before departure. And it’s likely Butch and Suni didn’t go through this process because they didn’t know they’d be in space come November 5.

NASA astronauts fill out the FPCA before they launch, and it’s approved by their local county election office. Once that happens, the county clerk sends a test ballot to Johnson Space Center in order to confirm it can be filled out on Space Station computers. Once that’s confirmed, NASA uplinks a secure electronic ballot to the ISS. The county clerk sends specific credentials to each crew member’s email so they can access the ballot.

The question was, basically, whether the Boeing Starliner crew members (though at that point they will be SpaceX Crew-9 crewmembers) would be given these secure credentials by the county clerk’s office, since they didn’t fill out that FPCA before they launched.

After the astronaut on the ISS completes their ballot, it’s sent back to NASA through the Near Space Network, which is managed out of NASA Goddard in Maryland. It goes through a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (or TDRSS) to White Sands Complex in New Mexico (yes, the same White Sands that Boeing Starliner will land at.) White Sands then transfers the completed secure ballots back to NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Finally, it’s sent to the county clerk who is the only one besides the astronauts with the password to decrypt the ballot.

Okay, enough history, can they vote???

The answer: A resounding YES. NASA confirmed for me via email yesterday that they have confirmed with the county clerk that ALL U.S. astronauts on the ISS, including Butch and Suni, will be able to vote in November’s election.