Kathmandu, Sept. 22 -- Around 141 countries worldwide provide some form of voting rights to citizens living abroad. The United States introduced absentee voting as early as 1862 under President Abraham Lincoln, and by 1997 astronaut David Wolf even cast his ballot from Earth's orbit.

Last year too, astronauts Don Pettit, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore voted from the International Space Station.

Currently, more than nine million Americans overseas, including those serving in the military, have access to absentee or postal voting under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act of 1986.

Other democracies followed suit. Britain extended limited overseas voting in 1918, Canada in 1942, and Germany through postal ballots in ...