Live FULL-TIME in an RV or Van YES You CAN VOTE! Here is your step by step guide. Watch NOW

I live full-time in my RV and I vote. How do I do that when I'm always on the move? It's easy, and today I'll tell you how. Happy Sunday, birdwatchers. I hope you're all doing well out there. You know, I'm amazed how much I get asked how I vote when I'm full-time on the road. Today, I'm going to give you every tool and tip you need to make sure that you can register to vote, get a ballot, and make sure that your vote is counted. If you guys are familiar with my book, Be a Nomad, Change Your Life, which, by the way, is for sale for $2.99 on Amazon this week, you know that I think choosing your state of residency is one of the most important things that you have to decide when you're going out on the road full-time. Your state of residency really affects a lot of things like how you pay your taxes, where you get your driver's license, where your car insurance is rated, where you can get your healthcare on an ongoing basis, and how you vote. Now, you can change your residency address, but for our purposes today, it's a little close to the election to do that. So think about where your driver's license is, and that will be your residency state for most of us. Here's an important thing to remember. Your residency address and a mailing address are two different things. And when you're a nomad, you have to treat them as two separate things and don't get them confused because it's just going to make your life harder. Rules for voting change by state and sometimes by county. So when you're considering where you want to be a resident, you should consider looking up those rules. Here's an important thing to know though, for this election, every state allows you to vote in person. You can go into your local county where you are a resident and vote. But for most of us, we want to vote using an absentee ballot because sometimes we're not just rolling through the county where we happen to be a resident on November 3rd. You might be surprised to know that you can request an absentee ballot in every state in this country without any excuse or because of COVID except in six states. And the rules in those states vary. I'm going to go over that in just a minute. But first, let me give you a step-by-step process for how you can vote when you're a nomad. Step number one is to go to your state of residency right now, see if you're registered to vote or register to vote. Down below, pinned at the top of comments and in the description, I have the links for every piece of information you need that will take you directly to your county so that you can do that. But jump on it, everybody, because the deadlines vary. Some of the states have deadlines as early as October 4th for registration. And in some of those states, you have to do it by mail, which is slow right now, so you gotta get on it. When you register to vote, you do it with your residency address, not a mailing address. You wanna choose the address that's, say, on your driver's license or your more permanent state address. After you register, the next step is to fill out an application for an absentee ballot. Now, when you do that, the application's going to ask you for your residence address, and then it's likely, depending on the state, going to ask you for a mailing address where you can receive the ballot. Here's something important to know. The post office will not forward election mail. So to recap really quick, here are the steps. Number one, register to vote in your state of residency using your residence address. Number two, fill out an application for an absentee ballot and give them a mailing address where you can receive the ballot. Now, you might be wondering where that is. If you're on the road, you can use services like the UPS store, mailboxes, et cetera, P.O. boxes, or lots of places have little mom and pop services that will accept mail for you for like a $5 fee. There are services like Escapees and Good Sam that have mail forwarding services. I talk about that in the book too. These services will collect your mail in one location and then package them up and resend them to you. They don't forward them. They repackage them and mail them so you could get your ballot that way. What's great is that in a lot of states, you can actually track the ballot being sent to you and then track it again when it's being sent out so you know that it counts. Here's two more important things to consider. When you're mailing your ballot in, look and make sure that it has enough postage. Depending on your county, you may have to put all the postage on or your county may only be paying to have it sent back bulk mail. Either way, make sure that you're putting on enough postage so that it goes first class. According to the Postal Service, it will get there faster. And according to the Postal Service, you must send your ballot back at least 15 days before the election for it to get there and count. We've all heard that the mail service is a little slow now, so I would jump on it. Let me give you four quick examples of how the rules can vary depending on your state of residency. Remember how I said every state will let you have an absentee ballot for no reason or because of COVID and that there are six that don't? Let's talk about those six states because even in those six states, the rules vary. Take Texas, for example. Texas is a really popular state for RVers. Now, if you look on their website, they don't let you just request an absentee ballot. If you are a resident there and you are going to be in town, they require that you vote in person unless you meet some very specific criteria. But if you look at the application, you can see that they allow you to have an absentee ballot if you're not going to be in the county on the day of the election. In fact, they require you to give them a mailing address outside the county to get an absentee ballot. You can't get it at your resident's address. Mississippi, on the other hand, doesn't seem to encourage absentee ballots at all. Of course, people in the military can always vote absentee ballot, but that's about all the information that I could find on the Mississippi website, except that people that are sick or elderly can request an absentee ballot, but they were asked to call the 800 number at their local county to get the rules. Texas allows you to track your ballot. Mississippi does not. Now, let me give you two examples of great states of residency for RVers. Like my home state, Colorado. You can register online, you can track your ballot. It's easy, and they've been doing it for years. South Dakota, another popular state for RVers, is just the same. Easy to register online, ask for a ballot, track your ballot, and vote. So like you can see, your state of residency makes a big difference on how easy it's going to be for you to vote as a nomad. Like Bill says, vote, it's easy. I hope this video has helped you guys. I hope to see you all out on the road soon or doing something you love. Until then, everybody have happy travels and be free.