A viral video exposed signature gatherers in San Francisco paying people $5 to sign ballot petitions with fake names, sparking investigations and raising questions about California’s initiative process.
The $5 Signature Scam
What started as a routine day in downtown San Francisco turned into a viral exposé of ballot fraud when JJ Smith pulled out his phone and started recording. The video he captured shows something that’s supposed to be illegal in California – people getting paid cash for their signatures on a state ballot initiative.
‘It’s for signing a petition. You get five bucks to sign a petition,’ one man in line tells the camera. But this wasn’t just about the money. The real bombshell comes when a woman at the signature table can be heard instructing someone to sign the name ‘Carol Sanderson of Avila Beach‘ – a completely fabricated identity.
The scene looks almost comically brazen: dozens of people standing in line like they’re waiting for free samples at Costco, except they’re committing election fraud for the price of a fancy coffee.
The Billionaire Tax Battle
The petition in question wasn’t some random local measure. It was the Retirement and Personal Savings Protection Act, a ballot initiative that needs about 874,000 valid signatures to qualify for November’s election. If passed, it would ban wealth taxes – including the controversial billionaire tax that’s been driving ultra-wealthy residents to pack up and move to states like Texas and Florida.
This initiative has serious money behind it. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Stripe founder Patrick Collison, Ripple chairman Chris Larsen, and venture capitalist Michael Moritz each dropped $2 million into the effort. The group, called Building a Better California, is pushing four different measures they say will address housing, affordability, and government accountability.
Damage Control Mode
When the video started making rounds on social media, both the campaign and their signature-gathering contractors went into full damage control mode. Abby Lunardini, a spokesperson for Building a Better California, was quick to distance the organization from the fraud.
‘To be clear, we absolutely do not tolerate this or any type of fraudulent activity in the signature-gathering process,’ Lunardini said. The campaigns demanded that their signature-gathering agency identify the circulator and reject any petitions from that person.
Nathan Click, speaking for the Retirement and Personal Savings Protection Act specifically, echoed those sentiments: ‘As soon as we became aware of the activities in question, we demanded that our signature-gathering firm identify the petition circulator, reject any and all petitions submitted by this circulator.’
The Signature-Gathering Underground
What the video really exposed was the murky world of California’s signature-gathering industry. Paul Mitchell, a Sacramento political consultant, wasn’t surprised by what he saw. ‘Signature gathering has been off the rails for years,’ he wrote on social media platform X.
Mitchell’s theory? This wasn’t some grand conspiracy by the ballot measure committees. Instead, it was likely ‘a street-level contractor defrauding the contractor one level above them who is paying for the signatures.’ Think of it like a pyramid scheme where the person at the bottom figures out how to game the system for quick cash.
The economics make sense in a twisted way. Campaigns typically pay anywhere from $2 to $6 per signature, and during COVID, that price spiked as high as $15. If you’re getting paid per signature and you can convince people to sign fake names for $5 each, the math works – at least until you get caught on camera.
Legal Consequences and Bigger Questions
The California Secretary of State’s office wasn’t amused by the viral video. A spokesperson confirmed that offering cash for signatures and knowingly filing petitions with forged signatures are both illegal. ‘In California, the initiative process is an important part of our democracy and those who abuse our system will be held accountable,’ they said.
But this incident raises bigger questions about California’s ballot initiative system. With campaigns needing hundreds of thousands of signatures and paying millions to professional signature-gathering firms, how much oversight is really possible? Mitchell’s assessment was blunt: ‘No ballot measure committee wants this behavior, and no county will validate these signatures.’
The woman at the table in the video might have made some quick cash before disappearing, but the signatures she helped generate won’t count toward the 874,000 needed. Still, the damage to public trust in the process might be harder to undo than the fraudulent signatures themselves.
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