"if you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much room"

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

We are "officially" homeless

Yesterday was an interesting day. Rudee's Dad went into the hospital Sunday evening when he started having trouble breathing. They diagnosed him with pneumonia and admitted him. Since then Rudee has been spending the night with her Mom while visiting her Dad during the day.
Her Dad is very civic minded and voting is not something he (or us for that matter) take lightly and he has been looking forward to casting his presidential vote for the last 4 years. We both knew that being admitted to the hospital was not going to stop him from voting so Rudee started making calls early Monday morning to find out what options were available for him. Neither one of us wanted to see him walking down the highway towards the county courthouse in a hospital gown dragging IV bags along behind him because we both knew he would do it if there was no other way!
Thankfully they have a procedure in place so Rudee made the trip to the courthouse for the forms to fill out. While there she checked on our status' as well because after the last election we got a letter from the election board telling us that our "address" at the UPS store could not be used under Indiana law as a "domicile" as far as voting is concerned. Therefore we were not allowed to vote until we had a "fixed domicile that we returned to every day" and could then re-register with that address. This would mean we would have to change our drivers license address since they have to match. We decided to just give it up and would miss voting this time around. Both of us were pretty bummed because this would be our first election to miss voting in 35 years but we didn't pursue it any further.
Rudee decided to bring it up to the County Clerk who is in charge of elections in our county. She said we were indeed registered as active voters so could have "probably" voted with no ill effects at our local polling place. Rudee explained our circumstance and the letter we received from the election board. The clerk decided we were homeless and could vote as such as long as we could do it before noon today when the early voting polls closed.
She called me and I made a mad dash to the courthouse. We filled out the necessary forms and got to vote. The address they put down for us was the courthouse address so I guess we are now, truly homeless. :-)
They actually came to the hospital for my father in law to cast his vote so he was a happy camper as well.

I'm not sure what we are going to do in the future. Most likely we will be changing our State of residency pretty soon because most of the states that are "full timer friendly" allow you to vote without difficulty. We have been dragging our feet on changing for a variety of reasons but now feel like it is time to make a change.

No word from the company yet besides "just hang loose a few more days". We are taking advantage of the down time to get everything ready for the road. I finished up preparing the Dakota for towing and made sure our tow bar, supplemental brake system, wiring, lights etc, were all ready to roll when the time comes. We are also grateful that Rudee can spend time helping her parents and siblings. I'll keep you posted.

6 comments:

  1. I'm glad we were able to vote early in South Dakota. It sure made things easier.

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  2. So glad you were all able to vote. So important, and never more so than this year. Hope Rudee's dad is feeling better.

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  3. I didn't know that one could vote as homeless. Hopefully Rudee's dad is better soon.

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  4. We are Florida residents and have been since 1994. We have been fulltimers since 2000. Just this year we ran into the same problem regarding our "address" and voting. We ended up using the courthouse address just like you. So, I guess we are officially homeless too. (Although I prefer the term "houselsss," because we do indeed have a home.) We are on our way to FL now to renew driver's licenses...the Real ID act is upon us. Wish us luck!

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  5. wanderingthrulife has left a new comment on your post "We are "officially" homeless":

    Sold our house and are switching residency from MN to SD. Concerns abt Medicare supplement - do you have any suggestions. We've looked on line and lots of info but no real experience that we have found. Not good with computers and new at rving. We have small tt but are going to give rving a few months b/4 seriously jumping in. Any ideas will be appreciated from anyone.

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    1. afraid we're a little ways away from the worries of medicare. Have you tried posting on some of the RV forums? I would reccomend:
      RV-dreams and Escapees forums. Both are full of new and experienced full timers who may be able to help,

      Phil

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