NASA astronaut Anil Menon casts midterm ballot from the International Space Station

A ballot cast from orbit

NASA astronaut Anil Menon said he voted in the US midterm elections from the International Space Station, using his room aboard the station as a voting booth. In a video posted on social media, he described using his computer to fill out an electronic voting form and sending it to Harris County, Texas. The midterm elections were held on Tuesday, 3 November 2026. Menon's post said all three American crew members aboard the station had the chance to vote, and Italian and Brazilian coverage of the video named fellow crew members Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney as the other two Americans on board.

How the ballot travels

Astronauts, like overseas voters, must complete a federal postcard application to request an absentee ballot, according to NASA. Once filled out, the electronic ballot is encrypted and routed through satellites to the agency's White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico. From there it is forwarded to the Johnson Space Center in Harris County, Texas, and finally reaches the county clerk for filing. NASA has described the safeguards on its website, and the agency stresses that only the voter and the clerk can access the ballot.

“To preserve the vote's integrity, the ballot is encrypted and accessible only by the astronaut and the clerk.”

The process is designed so that the ballot passes through several government and agency sites before it is counted, which keeps the chain of custody clear. Menon's account shows that the same arrangement serves astronauts who are hundreds of kilometres above the ground and voters who are far from polling stations.

Voting from remote places

Menon's case is not the only unusual one in this election. Other Americans cast absentee ballots from Antarctica and from remote Alaskan villages, where mail often arrives by plane. These voters face long delays and harsh conditions, which makes a fully electronic ballot route an important option. The distance between the orbiting station and a Texas county clerk's office is large, yet the ballot still follows a defined path through NASA and federal systems.

A voting right dating to 1997

Astronauts have been able to vote in US elections since 1997, when the Texas Legislature passed a bill allowing them to do so. The year before, astronaut John E. Blaha had been unable to vote in the 1996 general election while in space. The timeline below shows how that gap led to the current arrangement and how it was used in this year's midterms.