A recent investigation was launched after a video showed petition gatherers in San Francisco offering $5 cash to people in exchange for signing petitions using false names and addresses. This activity violates California law, which prohibits offering money or gifts in exchange for signatures and makes it a crime to file petitions with forged information.
Campaigns Involved: The signature gatherers were linked to initiatives funded by Building a Better California, a group backed by wealthy tech leaders like Google’s Sergey Brin. These initiatives aimed to oppose a proposed wealth tax on billionaires and a tax on retirement savings. Campaign representatives stated the gatherers were not direct employees and that they disavowed the fraudulent activity, cooperating with authorities to reject invalid petitions.
