Solano residents say California Forever petitioners spread misinformation about voting process

VALLEJO – As Martha Bolig was leaving a Vacaville Walmart last month, a man stopped her and asked her to sign two petitions. One was to allow a group known as California Forever to rewrite county zoning laws in eastern Solano County to build a new city of 400,000 residents. Bolig said she opposed it, but the man argued she should still sign the petition.

“The only way we can for certain knock it down is if we vote and vote against it,” the man said, according to a video of the encounter Bolig posted on Facebook. “If we don’t vote on it, they can go to the courts and say, look, the voters won’t even give us a chance.”

Bolig said that she did not feel comfortable signing a petition that she does not support and politely said no despite the man’s frustration. As she walked away, she noticed a sign on the petitioner's table that promoted the initiative as a way to build new homes and bring jobs to the county.

Bolig found the man’s approach misleading. In fact, according to California law if proponents of a proposed initiative collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, the county Board of Supervisors has the option to directly approve the initiative without ever going to a countywide vote. 

Bolig filed a complaint with the Secretary of State and the Attorney General’s office detailing the interaction and posted about her experience on social media, where a number of other residents have reported petitioners making false claims about the initiative and providing confusing or misleading information. Others have complained that they have been told the petition is for affordable housing, to help homeless people, or create jobs, and that signature-gatherers have demurred when asked if it was for the California Forever initiative.

California Forever’s project – known as the East Solano Homes, Jobs and Clean Energy initiative – has been controversial ever since the billionaire-backed group announced their intentions earlier this year to build a concept city on 17,000 acres of Solano County farmland after quietly buying up that land for years. A poll conducted by research group FM3 in early March indicated that 70% of Solano County voters oppose the measure. 

But the interactions also touch on a long-running debate over California’s voting process, where signature gatherers are paid for each signature they collect, providing a financial motivation for them to get people to sign any way they can. And some petitions pay more than others.

Cassandra Dana has owned land just outside of the proposed development for 23 years where she keeps goats and horses. She said that she overheard a signature gatherer outside a Suisun City Walmart asking for signatures on a petition to support affordable housing. The petitioner confirmed it was a California Forever petition and argued that it will help homeless people by building more affordable housing. 

Dana said the petitioner told her that he receives $12 for every signature he collects for California Forever. Another petition circulator collecting signatures in Solano County, who preferred not to give a name, told the Vallejo Sun that California Forever pays $6 per signature and an additional $3 bonus for a total of $9 per signature if the initiative qualifies for the ballot. The other petitions the circulator was offering to voters paid $3 per signature.

The Vallejo Sun has been unable to independently verify how much California Forever is paying petition gatherers. California Forever did not respond to questions. 

It’s illegal for signature gatherers to provide false information to voters. State law requires proponents of a voter initiative to provide paid and volunteer petition circulators with instruction on relevant state laws. Top funders of the initiative petition must also be listed clearly on all signature pages.

Solano County published a notice on March 20 that the county had received reports about petition circulators asking for signatures for a petition to Stop California Forever’s East Solano Homes Jobs and Clean Energy Initiative. But the county’s notice stated that no competing petition has been authorized and the only legitimate petition is California Forever’s initiative to rezone 17,500 acres of agricultural land to accommodate a new community.   

The statement provided a form for voters to withdraw their signature from a petition and advised residents to file complaints about misleading petition activity with the Secretary of State or with the county Registrar of Voters.

California Forever responded with a statement on its website about the reports of petitioner misinformation, claiming that the citizen complaints are intended to discredit the project. 

“A small but vocal group of opponents are attempting to create confusion and prevent Solano County voters from deciding what future they want for themselves and their children,” California Forever campaign manager Matthew Rodrigues said in that statement. 

Ballot initiatives can be costly ventures

Signature gathering efforts for voter initiatives in California are most often conducted by campaign management firms and contractors who hire paid petition circulators. These firms commonly use the pay-per-signature method to compensate circulators. 

The price paid per signature varies based on how many signatures are needed for a particular petition and how much time remains before the circulation period closes.

To qualify for the November ballot, California Forever has until the end of August to collect at least 13,062 valid signatures from Solano County voters, which is 10% of the votes cast for any candidate for governor in the last election.

Initiative campaigns are required to publicly report expenses, which include payments to petition circulation companies. But a full accounting of those expenses may not be complete until all the campaign filings are received and these figures may include administrative costs as well as costs for the excess signatures collected to create a buffer for signatures that are invalid.

Qualifying an initiative for the ballot is a major expense and can be cost prohibitive for initiatives without significant financial backing. For example, the backers of California’s Proposition 27, to legalize sports betting — which voters overwhelmingly rejected in 2020 — spent $18.8 million to secure the 997,139 signatures needed to place the initiative on the ballot, for a cost-per-signature of $18.87, according to Ballotpedia. 

Reforming signature gathering has failed

Despite the high costs of qualifying today, when California’s voter initiative process was established in 1911, it was designed to help curb influence by wealthy business interests by allowing voters to directly propose and reject legislation through the ballot. 

Legislators have frequently attempted to address issues of petitioner misconduct through changing the current method of compensation. But some say that changes in the petitioner pay structure would only lead to more problems related to the broader pay-to-play reality of California’s voter initiative process.

In a recent attempt to reform the signature gathering process, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, D-Los Angeles, introduced AB 421, that initially included a section titled the California Petition Circulator Accountability Act of 2023, which would have required paid petitioners for statewide initiatives to register with the Secretary of State and receive a training program developed by the agency.

It also proposed a requirement that volunteers collect 10% of signatures needed for statewide initiatives and referendums. But both the training and registration provision and the 10% volunteer requirement were stripped from the bill before the final version passed. 

In 2019, SB 660, a bill to prohibit pay-per-signature arrangements for state or local initiatives, referendums or recalls was authored by state Sen. Joshua Newman, D-Fullerton, sought to curb misinformation in signature gathering. 

The opening text of the pay-per-signature legislation described the reasoning behind the bill.

 “The Legislature hereby finds and declares that the communication of accurate information by signature gatherers is important to the integrity of the electoral process,” the bill’s text stated. “The Legislature further finds and declares that signature gatherers frequently communicate inaccurate information to voters in order to obtain their signatures on petitions, and that deception undermines the integrity of the electoral process.”

But the bill was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who argued that the move away from per-signature compensation would lead companies to pay signature gatherers hourly, which would make the process even more expensive.

“Payment per signature remains one of the most economical methods to qualify for the ballot,” Newsom wrote in his veto message. “This measure could therefore make the qualification of many initiatives cost-prohibitive for all but the wealthiest interests, thereby having the opposite effect.”