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| Subject: Idiots: Astronauts Vote From Space Wed Nov 07, 2012 1:14 am | |
| Beam me up … an absentee ballot? It turns out there’s no distance too far for absentee voting on Election Day. NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station have the option of voting from space, thanks to savvy technology and a 1997 bill passed by Texas lawmakers.
Astronauts working on the space station receive a digital version of their ballots in a secure email, which are beamed up to them from Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and then sent back to Earth.
“They send a secure ballot to Mission Control,” NASA spokesman Jay Bolden of the Johnson Space Center told ABCNews.com. “They’ll send it up to our astronauts onboard, and they fill it out and send it back as a private email. … astronauts do have privacy in the matter.”
The ballot is then sent directly to voting authorities.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/how-astronauts-vote-from-space/ |
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