The New York Times has this article about people who make a living gathering signatures on petitions. The story focuses on initiative petitions, and says that in California earlier this year, the rate for a single signature was $15. The article is behind a pay wall.
FAKE NEWS
Would someone who has access to the article please post the plain text here? Is that an issue, Richard? If so, an email would be appreciated. Thanks.
For Jeff, the $15/signature is an incitement to “cheat,” in the sense of not following a state’s rules for exactly what counts as a valid signature, especially if the company hiring individual signature gatherers doesn’t vet the signature pages closely until turning them in to the advocates launching the initiative, but goes ahead and pays them.
Here’s what I copied before the paywall descended:
>>Dederek Huff scanned the grassy hillside of Dolores Park in San Francisco one day this spring and saw dozens of people relaxing on picnic blankets and park benches.
To most people, it was an idyllic scene on a sunny day. To Mr. Huff, however, it was an opportunity to earn as much as $125 from each person in the park who would sign the stack of petitions under his arm.
“How y’all doing?” Mr. Huff asked as he approached a group of friends on a blanket. “Are you registered to vote?”
With his ease talking to strangers and his knack for reading a crowd, Mr. Huff used the same skills he said he had developed in a very different setting: selling party drugs on the Las Vegas Strip.
He had come to San Francisco because word had spread that campaigns were paying big money to place measures on the November ballot. So much, in fact, that Mr. Huff said he found he could make more money dealing democracy than dope.
“This is better than drug money,” said Mr. Huff, who has had drug-related arrests in Nevada, records show.<<
There you go.
If the initiative is not a statewide initiative, "cheating" can include getting signatures of people who can't vote on it. It may, in general, include people who are not registered to vote. And, as noted, it could have signature forms where the entire information is not filled out correctly as specified in California state law.
And, if the company who hired Mr. Huff doesn't vet all of this for the people that hired them, a petition drive might appear to have 10 percent or more signatures than necessary and yet fall short.
Seems like the segue from drug money to cheating is rather sudden. Did the article itself mention cheating, or is that your own text?
https://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/2026/120-nominations.pdf
NOV 2026 CONGRESS CANDIDATES
—
1 VOTER NOM PET FORMS —
(3) Elector Form [12] point type, [4.25 by 5.5 inches]:
NOMINATING PETITION – PARTISAN (for legislative offices) / NONPARTISAN (for executive and judicial offices)
I nominate (candidate’s name and address) [of the (one word party name – not more than 16 capital letters) Party] for (office) in (election area) at the (date) election.
Elector signature, printed name, address and date signed. [Elector in area involved]
Return to- (address)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/10/20/trump-maga-inc-400-million-spending-republicans-midterm-election/92349801007/
Trump says he’s spending $400 million to boost Republicans in midterms
—
TYRANT TRUMP GERRYMANDER ELECTION ROT SPENDING.
NOT USED TO REDUCE USA NATL DEBT OF $$$ 40 TRILLION ???
“SocraticGadfly” = troll Robert K Stock.
I know of examples of petition circulators cheating/engaging in fraud for .75 cents per signature. Some people will cheat no matter what the rate of pay is.
Petitions pay higher when it is a competitive market for paid petition drives and when there is less time to qualify them for the ballot.
Be careful of hobos with clipboards. Drug dealers are not even the worst.
These companies hire literally anyone, zero vetting, little to no training, and absolutely zero oversight in the field.
The only pay and incentives are based on production. Sometimes that means 70% or 75% or some other percentage of signatures must appear on their face to be valid when compared to a state database from, typically, several months earlier, although no one actually compares the signatures, just names, addresses, and sometimes dates of birth.
Sometimes the company’s pay the dregs of human filth they hire, people who can’t get jobs anywhere else, for all the signatures they bring in – forged signatures, tourists with fake in state addresses, temporary traveling workers, disqualified felons, underage kids, non citizens from other states and countries, illegals, green card holders, people who haven’t bothered to register to vote, Jehovah’s witnesses, prisoners on work release, otherwise valid signatures of people signing multiple times, out of state and foreign exchange students, signatures fitting multiple categories here.
There is almost always no disincentive to lying and misrepresentation. In many cases, there’s no real check against multilevel subcontracting to mentally ill homeless drug addicts and other desperate people out in the field who are often cheated out of whatever they earn, in part or in whole.
Even the company’s often treat their frequently multiple levels of contractors in a dishonest way. Some actually promote these illegal and unethical practices and others, such as paying people a portion of the proceeds to sign as voters as well, which is illegal in all of most places.
When safeguards are introduced by state or local jurisdictions the scumbag petition signature harvesting industry finds ways around it such as paying qualified gatherers to sign off pretending the work of unqualified harvesters is their own.
The signature harvesting industry is not sending their best. There are rapists. There are crackheads. There are thieves and robbers and con artist scammers. There are fentanyl junkies and mentally ill psychos. There are child molesters.
They are out there getting people’s names, addresses, dates of birth, and often other information if as is often the case they are registering voters and or getting people to put phone and email contacts on contact forms and so on. They can use this information for identity theft, blackmail, home invasion, robbery, rape, child molesting, and other crimes. Who would prevent that, and how?
People who claim to be volunteering when you ask them may actually be paid signature harvesters concealing that fact. That also goes for voter registration drives which are often paid operations, and for absentee vote harvesters and get out the vote operations.
All of them are hiring dirtbags and getting your information as well as often coming to your door and casing your home for criminal activities that they or their associates may later engage in.
Even actual volunteers may well be “volunteering” to give themselves some appearance of legitimacy to ask for your information, signature, open your door etc.
Just say no, and tell everyone you know to never, ever give them anything at all, ever. Do not talk to them. Avoid them like the plague they actually are.
RAW
“The signature harvesting industry is not sending their best. There are rapists. There are crackheads. There are thieves and robbers and con artist scammers. There are fentanyl junkies and mentally ill psychos. There are child molesters.”
And some, you believe, are good people?
“a petition drive might appear to have 10 percent or more signatures than necessary and yet fall short.”
Did you mean 100% or more? Wouldn’t that be not too uncommon in some places?
There were 3 statewide initiative petitions in California earlier this year that went up to $15 per signature, plus another one which had been paying $10 went up to $15 the last few days it was out. During the peak of this run from the latter portion of March until April 20th there were several other statewide initiative petitions paying $7-$12 per signature. Most of them ended by April 19th or 20th depending upon which coordinator one turned in petition signatures to, but the one that was paying $7 ran for another week at $10, but some of the petition circulators had quit working by that point. There were some city and county initiative petitions that ran during this time frame in different parts of the state. Some of the city petitions went up to $20 per signature, maybe higher.
Keep in mind that the above quoted rates of pay do not include overrides to petition coordinators. The amount of overrides varied depending upon the petition but some of them were double what the street price was to the petition circulators. I know on two of the ones that paid $15 the coordinator who had the contracts with the campaign proponent was got at least $30 per signature. They kept a cut of that as their override and then the coordinators below them across the state kept a small cut of this as their override.
Keep in mind that it has progressively gotten harder over the years to gather petition signatures. California is one of 4 or 5 states which officially has open access for petition circulators, which means they are supposed to be able to go anywhere to gather signatures which is open to public foot traffic, including shopping centers and malls and storefronts, and the police are not supposed to run them out, but like everywhere else the police do not always follow the law, but they do for the most part. On the flip side it is on average more difficult to get people to stop and sign petitions in
California than it is in most of the rest of the country due to a higher percentage of the population being non-citizens and homeless people and also due to the public being on average more jaded and more sick of petitions than people are in most states (note that California has on average more petition signature gathering than any other state).
In spite of the drawbacks petition circulators in California were still able to make a lot of money due to the high rates of pay and by getting people to sign multiple petitions, so even though it was generally hard to get a large volume of individual signers petition circulators could still make a lot of money. The petition coordinators, especially the ones on top with the contracts with campaign propponents, made a lot more money than any petition circulator made.
Kick kalipornia out.
They love fraud and communism, and they are ruining it for all other states due to their votes in congress and the electoral college. They must be kicked out of the USA.
Don of all Dons,
Would you say it would be a good thing if, for example, Iran was to drop some big ones on some major Kalipornia cities, or if God punished the coastal region’s of that Sodom by the Pacific with tectonic plate subduction, giant Tsunami waves, and other such Godly punishments for their immorality, race mixing, and Marxism?
Q,
I have not not not said that. Not!
Was our #1 petition harvester Andy Gonzalez covered in the NY SLIMES fake news article?
He’s actually our guy but we let him screw around on us with the Retard Party, Troll Moron Party, and other such minor miner parties. Sometimes we have 3ways, 4ways and moreways signature harvesting parties with him. Fun!
These parties mine for minors at sex parties?
I don’t think the Retard Party does, do we?
https://knappster.blogspot.com/2026/10/thanks-for-asking-100126.html?m=0
Knapp supports Somali invaders!
Loser Knapp, post your links somewhere else. Nobody here cares that you support Somali pirates.
Isn’t Loser Knapp a lemon party loser like the other gay retard loser Andy Gonzalez?
Whatever happened to there former lemon party partner Pankel Fraudankel?
Too much mining for minors at sex parties?
Why, is that gay?
Why are you gay?
California has 5 initiated constitutional amendments, and 4 initiated statutes.
I found two initiated constitutional amendments which had around 1.6 million raw signatures, with about 2/3 valid, and 875,000 needed. You could barely get by with around 1.3 million with 2/3 validity. But that would be risky because you would fail the sample count and depend on a full count which would take a lot longer, and would detect a lot more duplicates (a small sample will not detect many duplicates). California does not permit petitions to be cured – and this applies at a county level. If you turn in to few in San Bernandino County, can you make it up elsewhere?
So 1.6 million X 5 = 8 million signatures.
Statutory initiatives require 5/8 the number of signatures as constitutional amendments. So let’s say you should collect 1.0 million signatures.
1.0 million X 4 = 4 million signatures.
So 12 million signatures. The NYT article said $125 million was spent on qualifying initiatives, or just over $10 per raw signature.
12 million signatures is over half of registered voters, but closer to 80% of 2024 presidential voters, unless some have signed multiple petitions.
The former(?) Las Vegas drug dealer claimed he could collect $125 from one person lounging on a grassy slope in San Francisco. But how many people at the park will sign 10 petitions, particularly how rare the sun shines in San Francisco. That’s why there were so many people in the park that day. The circulator who had been laid off at a cannabis farm and now circulated petitions near his favorite coffee shop, which had a light pole where he could do pullups during slack periods said he had clipboards for measures he opposed, and people could go over to a table and sign if they bothered to.
There were some statewide initiative petitions in California which paid for signatures but later got withdrawn by the proponent. One that paid faoled to qualify.
Who says Simon is gay?