Man Accused of Paying for Fake Petition Signatures in San Francisco Identified as 50-Year-Old From Detroit
In the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, in San Francisco County, California, a man accused of paying homeless people to sign other people's names on petitions against a billionaire tax was seen confronting a reporter in a video that went viral. On November 7, the ABC7 News I-Team identified the man as Philip Deshaun Brunson, 50, who lives in Detroit, Michigan.
According to ABC7, last month reporter Dan Noyes was investigating a different story in the Tenderloin when he saw a woman with petitions spread across the hood of a car. As he approached and began taking pictures of the documents, a man emerged from the passenger seat and told him he was violating his privacy rights. When Noyes asked whether he was paying people, the man took a swing at him and said, "I ain't paid nobody." Neighborhood advocate JJ Smith had already captured video of the man and his partner paying a homeless couple $5 each to sign petitions in other people's names.
Brunson was identified because the earlier report went viral. ABC7 said that after last month's report aired, it checked the license plate and tried other means of identification but could not confirm the man's name. After the story spread online, messages arrived from across the country, including one from a signature gatherer in the Midwest who said he recognized Brunson immediately and pointed the I-Team to Brunson's social media. The gatherer, who asked not to show his face or use his name, said the signature-gathering community is small, that he had seen Brunson on other jobs, and that "there's a lot of petitioners that are upset, because our job is to go out there legally and do it the right way. You never beat the system; it never happens. You just get caught." ABC7 said a background check shows Brunson has a criminal history and spent time in prison. The I-Team said it left messages on Brunson's social media, email accounts and phone numbers but received no response as of its November 7 report, which did not say whether Brunson has been charged.
Officials and the sponsoring group have since responded. A spokesperson for California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the state's chief elections officer, said her office has reviewed the video and that an investigation is ongoing: "We are continuing to work closely with law enforcement to hold those who abuse the initiative process accountable." The San Francisco District Attorney's Office confirmed it has received a referral but would not comment on the status of the case. A spokesperson for Building a Better California, the group sponsoring the anti-billionaire-tax measure, said it has instructed its campaign's signature contractor to screen out any and all signatures submitted by Brunson, but has so far found none; the spokesperson said Brunson likely got scared off by the ABC7 story, and that the group has a zero-tolerance policy against any type of fraud.
Political consultant Brandon Castillo, who has run ballot measure campaigns for about 25 years and is not involved with either side of the billionaire tax issue, told ABC7 that signature gathering can be so lucrative that people travel state to state for the work, with online groups posting where the jobs are and what they pay; the anti-billionaire-tax group paid $15 a signature, and some gatherers make hundreds of thousands of dollars over a year or even a short season. Sponsoring groups and county election offices check the validity of signatures. Jim Irizarry of San Mateo County explained that every signature is digitized and compared with that voter's signatures from past elections, that a person looks at every one even when there are 300,000 of them, with 15 to 20 signature verifiers hired for the task, and that officials contact law enforcement if a petition circulator appears to be cheating. "The greatest danger we have here is undermining the integrity of the electoral process," Irizarry said, noting that doing so is a felony and that a circulator who violates the law will go to jail.
Source: ABC7 News
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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