Sacramento, California– California election officials said Friday they are investigating whether signature gatherers in San Francisco illegally offered to pay people to sign ballot petitions using aliases.
A video posted Monday on X shows a sign reading “Sign Petition for $5” and a line of people waiting along the sidewalk. A woman sitting at a folding table appears to be asking for the name and address to be used to fill out the petition. When the recording person asked what the petitions were for, the woman said: “Just sign them.”
The California Secretary of State’s Office said in a statement that it was “aware of the matter and investigating it.”
In California, people can place measures on the ballot to gain voter approval by collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures. Campaigns can People pay per signature They congregate, providing an incentive for workers to get as many as possible.
At least one of the petitions seen in the video was calling for a tech-enabled ballot measure to fight A proposed tax on billionaires. It is funded by the Committee to Build a Better California, a committee created by wealthy business leaders including Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who donated $20 million.
Molly Weeden, a campaign spokeswoman, said the signature gatherers were not working directly for the campaign. She added that the campaign is cooperating with the authorities to reject petitions collected with false information.
“Under no circumstances do we tolerate this type of activity,” Weeden said in a statement. “Our campaign took immediate action and campaign attorneys notified the authorities.”
She said the campaign notified election officials as soon as the video surfaced.
Another ballot petition funded by Building a Better California for a measure banning a new tax on retirement savings was also featured in the video. Campaign spokesman Nathan Click said the campaign “does not tolerate fraudulent activity in any signature gathering operation.”
“As soon as we became aware of the activities in question, we requested that our signature collection company identify the petition promoter, and reject any and all petitions submitted by this promoter,” Click said in a statement.
There were several petitions on the table, and it’s not clear if they pertained to any additional campaigns.
Offering money or other gifts in exchange for signing ballot measures is illegal under state election law, the Secretary of State’s office said. Signatures on petitions are reviewed and verified against voter registration records, and non-matching signatures will not be counted.
“Circulating, signing and/or submitting to the election official any initiative petition known to include false names is also a crime,” the office said in a statement.
__
Associated Press journalist Sophie Austin contributed.