When people make deals on the sidewalks in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, they often sell drugs for cash. But this spring, some engaged in a different trade: offering cash for signatures to help initiatives qualify for the ballot.
On one afternoon this month, three men in ski masks set up a folding table in a part of San Francisco known for homelessness and addiction and handed out $5 bills and pizza slices in exchange for signatures.
Up and down one block of Leavenworth Street, people in tattered clothes sat on the sidewalk, some smoking drugs, others nodding off. Some who gathered to sign petitions clutched drug paraphernalia in one hand and a pen in the other.
In a California ballot initiative season flush with cash, paid petitioners can make as much as $15 per signature. Prices are sky high largely because a proposed billionaires’ tax has spurred countermeasures funded by billionaires, and various campaigns have entered a veritable bidding war for John Hancocks across the state.
While petitioners can legally earn money for convincing California voters to sign, it is illegal to pay signatories. And elections officials are supposed to reject signatures that are forged or don’t belong to a registered voter.
Evan Underwood walked up Leavenworth after signing a petition at the table. Mr. Underwood, who said he is homeless, explained in an interview that he had signed the petition just for the cash and food. He said the men had told him what the measure was for, but he had already forgotten. (Mr. Underwood, 32, is registered to vote in San Francisco, according to voter records.)
The signature gatherers had clipboards in a crate with petitions for a measure that would require government audits of proposed taxes and could block the billionaires’ tax. Building a Better California, a group backing the measure, has received at least $45 million from the Google co-founder Sergey Brin and several million dollars each from the venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz, among others.
Molly Weedn, a spokeswoman for the audit measure, said the campaign has been working with law enforcement officials.
“Our campaign has a strict, zero-tolerance policy against any form of fraudulent activity,” she said.
Kurt Oneto, a lawyer working on measures backed by Building a Better California, said the group is using a signature gathering firm, which in turn hires subcontractors. Those smaller companies seek signature gatherers on websites like Craigslist.
Mr. Oneto said the portion of signature gatherers engaged in fraud is “exceedingly small” and that the bad signatures would be tossed by the firm and elections officials. But gatherers are paid $15 per signature when they turn in their petitions, regardless of whether the signatures are ultimately validated.
Mr. Oneto said anyone paying signatories and collecting invalid signatures were essentially stealing from the campaign donors. “Those folks are engaged in theft,” he said. “We’d love to see those crimes prosecuted.”
In March, a video of different signature gatherers in San Francisco went viral. They appeared to be asking a line of people to sign names that were not their own in exchange for cash. The activity has invited further criticism of California’s electoral process from Republicans, who accuse the state of allowing fraud to occur.
The office of California’s top elections official, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, said it is working with law enforcement to investigate such petition fraud. Spokesmen with the Police Department and District Attorney’s Office in San Francisco said they could not comment on current investigations.
Omar Ward, who posts social media videos of the Tenderloin under the alias J.J. Smith, posted the March video and others like it. He said he had seen fraudulent signature gathering at least 10 times in the city in the past several weeks.
Pablo Gonzalez said in an interview that he had signed a petition in March for cash, putting a name assigned to him by the signature gatherers instead of his own. He said he had no idea what the measure was about.
“I was just there for the five bucks,” he said.
Other videos have shown similar activity in Los Angeles’s Skid Row, and similar fraud has been reported in past California election cycles, sometimes resulting in convictions.
Bilal Mahmood, who represents the Tenderloin on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, said he has received several calls from constituents who were confused about why they were being offered money for signatures. He said it was disheartening that rogue operators would “prey on the most vulnerable communities in San Francisco.”
Lawrence Smith, a handyman and longtime Tenderloin resident, said he was walking along Leavenworth Street recently when a man asked him to sign somebody else’s name on a petition for cash.
President Trump has frequently criticized California’s elections as fraudulent, and Mr. Smith said he worried the actions of some of these people would only reinforce that rhetoric.
Mr. Smith, who is Black, said he admonished the petitioner, who was also Black: “I told him, ‘Man, as long as it took Black folks to get the right to vote and you’re out here doing this?’”
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
Heather Knight is a reporter in San Francisco, leading The Times’s coverage of the Bay Area and Northern California.
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