Call me crazy but was Wil.I.Am about to correct Mr. Cooper when he compared their new tech to Star Trek, because the hologram messaging method is clearly more Star Wars than Star Trek. Or is the Silver Fox trying to weasel is way into my nerdy heart even deeper?

Astronauts who are in space at the time of an election were given the right to vote by a 1997 Texas law (astronauts tend to live in or near Houston). Fincke and Chamitoff will cast their votes, and the results will be sent to the Harris and Brazoria County Clerk via encrypted downlinks and emails. The two participatory democracy loving space travelers even made a "Get Out the Vote" video while on board the ISS.

If they're going through all that trouble to vote, wouldn't you feel like a jerk if you didn't bother? So vote already!

No word on which candidate the astronauts plan to vote for, but the ISS is sporting a "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Kodos" bumper sticker. Image by: NASA.

Be like an astronaut: Vote! [Scientific American]

British magazine Five Dials asked eleven writers to “remember” their experiences on November 5, 2008, the day after Election Day. Of the eleven, three select McCain as the fictional winner. Two imagine the president-elect as promptly dying, but Suketu Mehta, author of autobiography Maximum City posits a world where Obama and Palin both go rogue – for each other:

He told her he wanted to have a private talk, to tell her that her attacks on him were getting increasingly hysterical and dangerous. The man arrested with the rifle at his last rally had said he had ‘been riled up’ by her speeches. He was going to ask her to cool it down, just a little. So they went up alone, in the still of the night, to her suite in the Sheraton on the square.

Who knows what happened there? Was it just loneliness, the brutal months on the trail, or just intelligent desire? They’re not doing any explaining, and it doesn’t matter anyway. When he told his wife the next day, the first thing she said was, ‘I’m no Hilary.’ The cuckolded husband, on the other hand, didn’t bat an eyelid. He was used to it. ‘You’ll come back,’ he predicted.

Lydia Millet has written politically-tinged comedy (George Bush: Dark Prince of Love) and speculative fiction (Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, where three Manhattan Project physicists are transported to modern America to survey their work). She envisions Obama eking out a victory, and how the Republican ticket handles the news:

John McCain, after delivering a cheerful concession speech that confused supporters and opponents alike with its puzzling allusions to ‘victory over the yellow man’, is taking a well-deserved rest in one of his eight homes in Sedona, Arizona while Sarah Palin, who plans to resign the governorship in favour of work in the private sector, is busy signing sponsorship deals with a number of corporations, including a hockey faceguard manufacturer based in Duluth and the trendy Japanese maker of her wire-rimmed glasses.

Playwright and memoirist Said Sayrafiezadeh, whose parents were members of the Socialist Workers Party, writes a fantasy that has neither major party candidate as victor. Instead, the people elect Roger Calero, the SWP candidate:

The Church of St Paul the Apostle was overflowing as usual and it was early evening before my wife and I could get inside. The carrot soup had a slightly metallic taste and the bread was stale and the stench of body odor was oppressive, but it didn’t matter. There was lots of excited talk at our table about how Calero had declared he was going to end the use of currency within three days of his inauguration. Within three weeks all factories and farms would revert to complete worker control. Were these just campaign promises? someone at the table asked. No, people responded vigorously, Róger Calero was a different kind of politician, he was a worker – a meat packer – and his interests were working-class interests. Everyone had a good laugh about the way McCain and Obama had tried desperately to salvage their campaigns by claiming that they too were socialists. ‘I’ve always hated capitalism and imperialism just as much as you have, my friends,’ someone said, mimicking McCain’s much-derided statement. A few of the lawyers got into a lively debate over how quickly Bernanke and Paulson would be brought to trial and whether they should be imprisoned for life or used to build roads and schools. And then everyone voiced their enthusiasm that Bush should also be tried if he could be extradited from the Cayman Islands.

But some writers suspect nothing ever changes, as with Hot Animal Love scribe Scott Bradfield, whose entire entry reads:

Of course I remember – who doesn’t?

Personally, I blame Nader.

The full entries are available in the latest issue of Five Dials.

Image from spudlyspudly.

[via The Guardian]

Over at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the guardians of digital justice are working on the Total Election Awareness project, which will track the performances of voting machines on election day. This is a software tool that allows election-monitoring organizations to track calls and emails from ordinary voters like you, reporting about everything from malfunctioning e-voting machines to other election-day incidents or concerns. Want to help with the TEA project? Download the software and start hacking.

Like John Edwards, Clinton promised to give the White House Science Adviser direct access to the President once again. This is huge: for eight years, no top science adviser has had the ear of the Commander in Chief. Not surprisingly, the Republican candidates are following in Bush's footsteps and showing little interest in elevating the science adviser again, or in forging close ties with the scientific community.

Also not surprisingly, candidates' science policies were at their most elaborate and promisey when they talked about climate change issues — a popular topic with broad appeal. Every single candidate promised to invest more in "clean energy" or "alternative energy." For Clinton, this meant working hard to get in line with Kyoto and post-Kyoto protocols. For Giuliani, this meant investing in more nuclear power plants. Hey, nukes are clean energy! Just be sure to keep a lot of boron around in case of meltdown.

Geek the Vote with Popular Mechanics' Guide to the Candidates [via Slashdot]