Paid signature gatherers are operating inside homeless encampments in San Francisco to collect ballot petition signatures for California’s November 2026 propositions. Video evidence captured on the street shows signers being offered payment and instructed by gatherers to use other people’s names and addresses, and the operation was still running the next day at a different location. When something goes wrong at street level, who is actually responsible?

In this episode, we sit down with JJ Smith, the San Francisco videographer who filmed the operation firsthand; James A. Kus, Fresno County clerk and registrar of voters; and Susan Shelley, editorial writer at the Southern California News Group, to examine how the legal market for paid signature gathering creates the economic conditions for this kind of fraud. They break down the per-signature price spike driven by the November ballot deadline and why the subcontractor chain behind commercial signature gathering makes accountability difficult to trace.

Views expressed in this video are the opinions of the host and guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.