Brandon Hulse, one of I-1068′s very best volunteer signature gatherers, was about to enter the Safeway at corner of South 38th Street and South M street in Tacoma at 5 p.m. this evening when he was stopped by a man asking him to sign the “Marijuana Reform Act.” The man was a paid petitioner and he was with another paid petitioner. The pair were engaging in deception and fraud and were poaching signatures that properly belonged to I-1068.
Hulse said that they had petitions that were clearly not I-1068–the Marijuana Reform Act–wrapped crosswise around a sheet of cardboard so that one could only see the signature lines but not the title and ballot summary language at the top of the petition. Hulse asked them if they’d turn in their signed copies of I-1068 to him, so he could get them into Sensible Washington’s offices.
“We actually don’t have that,” one of the men told Hulse, according to Hulse.
Meanwhile, a woman was signing the petition after being told it was the Marijuana Reform Act. She began saying “Sign it, sign it” to Hulse. Hulse got one of the men to flip the petition around so he could see the top of it and it was clearly marked as I-1107, which would repeal certain taxes enacted by the State Legislature earlier this year. Hulse went into the Safeway, phoned me and explained the situation. I asked him to try and get the men’s names, what company they worked for and to take their pictures on his cell phone.
Photos and details follow.
Note the bottom of the petition page; it does not contain the information printed on I-1068 petitions.
Close-up of I-1107 fraudulently portrayed as I-1068.
One of the persons collecting signatures for I-1107 yet telling citizens they are signing for I-1068 Marijuana Reform Act
Hulse went back outside where the men again asked him to sign the “Marijuana Reform Act.”
“The petition he put in my face was not 1068, it was 1107,” said Hulse. “And I said, ‘Let me see the marijuana reform one’. He was like. ‘Oh, I don’t have that have one. He has that one’. I asked his partner, ‘Can I see I-1068, the one you just asked me to sign?’
“We don’t have that one,” Hulse said the man told him.
“Why are you asking me to sign it if you don’t have it? You’re trying to trick me into signing this one,” Hulse said, referring to I-1107.
Hulse said the petitioner, who was getting anywhere from $3 to $3.50 per signature, told him that he was “told by his organization that they were allowed to say that.”
Hulse replied, “You guys can’t do that. You can’t tell people they’re signing something they’re not signing.”
“We have a right to make a living,” one of the petitioners told Hulse, according to Hulse.
According to Hulse, the pair started talking amongst themselves.
One of them said, “Ignore this guy. We can say whatever we want to say.”
I have left a voice mail for Tim Martin, a beverage industry executive and sponsor of I-1107, but have yet to receive a return call. In the morning, I will call the Attorney General’s office and file an appropriate complaint and ask them to investigate the situation, which on its face would appear to violate a law or two.
{ 29 comments }
one last thing if these guys have collected all those signatures that can be seen in the photo by deception, these guys definately took a big bite out of our count alone. assuming these were just two of what is looking like could be a widespread voter deception or fraud scam we really need to find out who those guys are track down their petitions and have the signatures examined and verified very closly instead of just verifying the name and address. who knows if we put the preasure on these guys it may expose a deleberate and wide spread organized and encouraged effort to pad their numbers with our supporters. who knows it could cost them big come november as in tossed out. precedents are set all the time. Can the state truely allow something like this if the numbers would have put us over the top and them to fall short not to say their efforts have done this. i believe they turned in 300,000 signatures. this will put them close if i heard the numbers right. this would possibly make our signatures what put them over the top depending on how close the state count will put them.
I feel i should be a little more clear on the last statement. I do not know for a fact that the second petition was not 1068 , but followed the typical scenario used by these scamers.
there is a way to find out just how wide spread this problem was but it would be a long process, and possibly worth more to reform the iniative process than to us at this point. collect all the signatures for 1068 and the 1107 remove the names that appear on both and then call 1,000 or more and do a survey to determine the percentage of people that were deceived. I would concentrate on addresses in the areas of where the infractions are strongly suspect. then if a significant percentage, 1% or better then it would be a strong calling to revamp the laws to prevent this in the future. one percent of their 300,000 signatures is 3,000. it would be very nice to find out there was a huge percentage of people that got duped and be able to present the evidence of this with factual data so nobody can say were just venting sour grapes., and reforms may be inacted. who knows, maybe if we present it to the right politition they may just make it a referendom. don’t write it off untill it has been tried. we know the polititions that favor legalization and genuinly have put their necks on the line to try and pass bills for legalization. i don’t know just how possible that is but even a 1% chance is worth the effort . Can we still have a chance for this november? if so you know the referendom may be better than the signature drive. worth the effort that would depend on just how much signature poaching has pissed us off and if we want it bad enough to try. if we can do this the worst case senario serious talk about new iniative reform and possible action. but nothing can happen along these lines untill we can come up with some tangible data to support our case. is this something we want to persue? or maybe this is something the state should be doing? if what we were doing with 1068 wasn’t such abig, live, and hot topic the 1107 gatherers would have never used our cause to support theirs. true?
I was told by a paid signature gatherer to sign one of the alcohol petitions. i told him i had no interest in alcohol petitions. i then said he should be getting signatures for I-1068 he said oh “i have that one too”, and put the second petition on top the top of it was covered with something green just like the first. this person was African american with a skateboard in front of best buy in bellingham about a week ago on saturday. I know he was a paid gatherer because he said it is how he was paying for college with petitions. as i was entering best buy. when i came out he hit me up again which is when i said he should collect signatures for 1068 . If i knew we didn’t have any paid petitioners i would have said something much sooner. I honestly believe that a lot of people have been deceived into signing the wrong petitions. it could be 40,000-50,000 signatures as many people have had suspect encounters with the other petition gatherers.
I would be more than willing to sign a statement if an investigation of some sort can be started on this. does fraud sound like a crime it does to me. fraud in a legal process i don’t believe is normaly taken lightly, maybe im wrong.
well…first law enforcement confiscates as drug bust evidence an unknown number of properly signed i-1068 petitions (have those actually been returned? …as well as the copies?) and NOW, PAID signature gatherers for some other initiative (paid so many dollars for EACH signature they get….)……. POACHING signatures. SHEEZE…..What a country!
COME ON….PEOPLE….LET’S PUT THIS initiative ON THE NOV BALLOT and
free the plant!
Here is a thought if the same thing happens to you (someone asks you to sign I-1068, but it turns out not to be I-1068…).
Take the clipboard as if to sign. Write instead of your signature: “Petition represented as I-1068. YOUR NAME HERE, DATE.” Then, in the upper left signature blank, make a little peace symbol.
At least it spoils the fraudulent petitions and discourages the fraud. At best the fraudsters hand these petitions in and it disqualifies the corporate paid fraud efforts.
I’m pretty sure I saw this going on at Tacoma Hempfest. I saw a guy with
petitions folded in half and they looked like that picture.
I just assumed the guy screwed up printing them some how… Didn’t think people would actually be misrepresenting and stealing signatures.
I saw a couple more people with those folded petitions… That makes me
furious.
If I see anyone doing this at Taste of Tacoma today I am definitely going to tell them how I feel… And stick right by them announcing to all potential signers that I have the REAL marijuana reform petition!
Rule number 1 : Dont sign something before you read it. Its plain and simple. I wouldn’t just take anyone “word” that I was signing something… cmon seriously ? Dont be mad at the people lying, be mad at all the gullible people that will sign anything someone asks them to.. Sad really. The MJ smokers of Washington need to brighten up some .
I collected some petitions (I-1068) from a paid petitioner today. I’ll mail those in as soon as possible. I recommend that to anyone who comes in contact with them. . Ask them for the petitions so that you can turn in.
The paid petitioners don’t know what to do with them.
-thanks
On the other hand, there have been honest paid petition gatherers. I know, ‘cuz at an event in the town I live in, they gathered 42 signatures for me and then recruited me to join them. (I didn’t.) Its totally like joining the circus. I gave a guy 3 copies yesterday. He told me he had collected for 1068 and turned them in. He asked me if I was Angela. In fact, he may be at Tacoma Hempfest. So will I … possibly there will be on opportunity to speak to him if he is in Tacoma tomorrow. By the way, I had approached him to ask if he was collecting for 1068. So, it depends, I guess, on many things. I don’t feel like I was scammed. They sure started to show up at all of our events at the beginning of June. I would not put anything past anyone, so maybe we are being scammed… I hope not. The voters are with us now, doesn’t it seem? I had people tell me last weekend at the Slightly Stupid gates as they came up the hill to stand in line that they’d “been looking for it,” to sign. And mind you, this is in Eastern Washington.
If they have inujured our campaign we should be able to sue.
the police cannot do much and the ag’s office tells us that the state supreme court has twice ruled that forcing petitioners to make only true statements would invade their free speech rights. really.
Did anyone call the police?
Wow! I’ve questioned a lot of people who were clearly paid to collect signatures and the closest to this I’ve found was a person telling me they ran out of I-1060 petitions and needed to go back to their car to get more, at the Strawberry festival.
Fraudulent misrepresentation is just that and I would make sure the media has all of this information to blast out there in order to make sure people sign the right one!
I’m surprised there isn’t already a law in place making it illegal to misrepresent what people are lending their signatures to–or, is there a law against it, just not a felony charge?
I’ve seen some questionable situations with paid signature gatherers claiming to have I-1068. One was in Olympia at Capital City Pride where someone was using I-1068 as a hook to draw people over and told me he was gathering signatures for I-1098 and I-1068. I spoke to him and he said he was doing I-1098 but also doing I-1068 while he was at it because he supported I-1068. He seemed legit but I didn’t actually see any of the I-1068 petitions and could see I-1098 petitions (they looked distinctly different) which is why I spoke to him.
The other definitly questionable situation was at Shelton Wal-Mart the first time paid signature gatherers were there when I was. I thought she might have gotten some copies from one of the other volunteers. I’d talked with her briefly relaying a message from management which set her off even more than her normal behavior which was so out of line that even some of the other very aggressive paid people were worried she was going to cause them problems (or at least were blaming her for the customer complaints they were certainly helping generate). I didn’t try to speak to her any more or see if she really did have copies of I-1068 as she seemed very unstable as well as aggressive and I didn’t want to possibly cause her to get more verbally abusive or even get physical which would create major problems for everybody. That was the day about 6-9 police cars showed up and everyone got a lecture even though management told the police the Marijuana Reform people weren’t causing problems.
Lately I’ve been hearing people say, “I’ve already signed both of yours” and I tell them I only have one and try to ask if they are sure they’ve signed the Marijuana Reform initiative, which is all volunteer so not likely to have been among any they’ve signed in a group of petitions. I’ve been assuming this was legitemate confusion about some pair of petitions people have been circulating together.
Even longer I’ve been telling people who say things like they’ve “already signed all those” that I-1068 is a volunteer effort and probably they haven’t signed I-1068 if they signed a bunch of petions at the same time. Also, I try to get some signatures started on a blank petition before a signed one is full because a petition with signatures draws more people than one that is blank. I point out the top for them to read to make sure they see it is just a different copy of the same petition.
I’ll be letting people know about this fraudulent misrepresentation problem and strongly emphasizing if they aren’t sure whether they’ve signed I-1068 it’s legal to sign it and if they have signed already, an unintentional duplicate signature will just mean only one signature gets counted; only knowingly signing twice is criminal.
Could this fraudulent misreprentation be more than taking advantage of people’s strong genuine interest in I-1068? Specifically, could sponsors or financial backers of some other petitions (or just opponents of I-1068) be using this as a tactic to prevent I-1068 from qualifying? If so, maybe we can get evidence of this. I’d guess the likeliest source of evidence would be people who spotted attempts to trick them and we should be making attempts in the next weeks to let them know about this and ask them to come forward and give formal statements of the fraud they witnessed.
Let’s get this on YouTube.
Anyone local who can peacefully get this on video- please help out.
i fear it may be many avi since we’re now getting multiple reports of this happening. it disgusts me in ways i don’t have words for.
This is so infuriating. I wonder how many people haven’t signed the real i1068 because of this.
chances are it was not our initiative, sadly, that you signed.
Makes me wonder if it’s the one I signed at Target in Issaquah a few weeks ago. I remember asking the lady which one is I-1068 The top on all of her’s were covered. I wonder if it was a different one I signed. If it was 1107, then I signed it twice and nulllify my signature.
That’s what happened at Trader Joe’s in Issaquah, they had a laminated chart listing their petitions one being “I-1098″. The description was not I-1098. I told them they misrepresented the real I-1098. Next time, I’ll take pics and names if it happens again!
This happened to me on approx June 16 or 17th. I was getting on the South Lake Union Trolley at the downtown stop and some guy was asking some first-timer questions for how to pay for the trolley, etc. Once we were on the trolley, he asked me to sign your 1068 petition but when I took the clipboard to sign, I stopped to read it and it was actually something about closing state-run liquour stores and allowing private stores. There were two petitions on the board, so I took the time to check both out.
He went on to ask some girls to sign the marijuana petition and probably asked other people too but I’d stopped paying attention.
I didn’t call him out on it at the time. I’d assumed it was just a mistake on his part.
Stupid is as stupid does?
Call the newspapers and tv news.
There are absolutely no extensions given.
There should be a law making it a felony to falsify presentation of petitions or failing to turn in collected signatures whether paid for or not to allow the voice of the people to be heard, not held hostage for ransom.
Don Skakie
This is interesting, and something I would never have imagined as being a potential problem.
I agree with all three previous comments:
I hope it pisses off enough of the right people (those who are able to affect change on a grand, fundamental level), and I hope that gaining an extension based upon these findings happens.
Sucks to rediscover that many people are untrustworthy, and think they have some right to deceive others. Not cool, guys.
that is just sad, and only points out the problems inherent with PAID signature collection. they have a ridiculous motive and advantage already, and they still have to poach our signatures.. dirtbags..
hopefully this will piss some folks off, somehow i don’t see these chuckleheads changing their tactics..
I would also reach out to the Secretary of State and start filing for an extension based on this evidence.
I wonder if this isn’t ground for an extension because of the deception? Who really knows the extent of paid gathers using this same tactic and violating the due process of Washington voters who have been defrauded?