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Comment by jacobgkau | Hacker News Reader

> But you do realize that even the government of each state does not know who lives at what address?

Do you know that our voter registration, which is organized by state and ultimately administered at the county level, does include that information?

Also, have you considered how a mapping to an address would have helped in this case between two homeless people?

> It’s a miracle people can get their mail in the US (and I know a whole neighborhood on Hawaii that can’t!)

Did a quick web search because this seemed dubious. I think you're referring to a neighborhood that uses PO boxes. They absolutely can and do still "get their mail," they just need to go down the street for it instead of having it dropped 10 feet away from their front door. Less convenient, but not as if the system isn't there, and it would be trivial to have a mail carrier fill in that last half-mile if it made since for that community.

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> Do you know that our voter registration, which is organized by state and ultimately administered at the county level, does include that information?

If you're a citizen, and you're correctly registered to vote. Additionally, for various reasons, US voter register quality is relatively poor - one study estimates that there's 6.1 million voters who have their name registered in more than one state (https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/double-registration-and-strat...).

> Do you know that our voter registration, which is organized by state and ultimately administered at the county level, does include that information?

There are lots of people in the US who are not registered to vote. A few reasons:

* They are non-citizens.

* They are children.

* They are convicted felons and live in a state where they are not eligible to vote (either while serving their sentences or after).

* They are eligible, but have chosen not to register.

I'm sure there are other categories of people who are not registered to vote. But even just these represent more than a hundred million people, a good third of the population, at least.

Hey, you know another system that’s broken? The US voting system. Because you can’t know for sure who is entitled to vote if you don’t know who lives in your country.

You’re trying to put the cart before the horse with this argument. A voter registry under the current US system is not going to get higher quality data than the other existing government databases; in other words, it’s equally susceptible to fraud and abuse because it relies on weak authentication measures like phone bills or birth certificates.

Yeah they have to pick up their mail a few miles down the road at a private business which runs their PO boxes. I don’t that’s an acceptable level of service but to each their own, I guess…

> at a private business

The USPS is not a private business. They are the ones who "run" PO boxes. The acronym literally stands for "Post Office box," and they are in post offices.

No, it's not the USPS. I said a private business to keep it a bit anonymous but if you don't believe me, here it is: http://808alohamail.com/ There's hundreds of households on a fairly small area who are not at all served by any mailman, instead they all drive down the road to this place. Three local ladies started it up because the USPS dropped the ball.

I happen to know about this because I know someone local. They also told me about their new place, also on Hawai'i, where the mail instead arrives at a UPS office. (Not USPS. UPS.)

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