10 Things You Should Know about Paid Circulators
- Today most petitions are carried by professional "mercenaries:" petitioners who travel from state to state carrying any petition, regardless of the topic, that pays by the signature.
- These mercenaries are driven purely by the dollar and are willing to bend or break state laws, such as residency requirements, to circulate petitions promising a large paycheck.
- Some petition circulators sign the required state forms with incomplete or misleading information, such as providing a local address that doesn't exist.
- Mercenaries often use bait-and-switch tactics and other scams to get people to sign petitions.
- Circulators are willing to lie to the public saying whatever the public wishes to hear in order to get their signature.
- "Stopper petitions," are often utilized as a way of getting voters to stop and sign a universally popular initiative and then having them also sign the controversial petition.
- Mercenaries have copied signatures from one petition to another, usually from the most popular, to other more controversial measures.
- Some circulators carry as many as twelve petitions at once.
- These circulators may have criminal records including identify theft or sexual assault.
- Some don't "intend" to cheat the system...at first. But, because the company does not enforce regulation and because the lure of money is strong, circulators see it in their best interest to work the system.
