John,
While I very much appreciate your willingness to help -- and will try to keep it in mind next time I run for office! -- I believe you are seriously underestimating how tough it is to get signatures, and how long it takes. You're talking about getting more than one signature per minute, whereas when circulating petitions in the past I've found that working in a moderately busy area at a fairly steady clip might bring in about 10 signatures per hour (one every 6 minutes). It's often a little easier to get support for candidates just seeking to get on the ballot than for ballot measures, but nevertheless.
It isn't strictly signatures that must be provided; signers also have to provide their addresses. This alone takes some people longer than a minute (those who are elderly, disabled, distracted, etc.). Some make mistakes and have to start over. It takes time to explain to people what you are gathering signatures for. It takes time to ask people if they are registered to vote in the city. They have to remember the address and spelling of their name they used to register, and it's good to remind them to try to sign their signature the same way they signed when they registered, lest it not match what's on file with the Elections Department and be deemed invalid. Some people aren't sure where or whether they're registered, and have to think about it. Others will want to read your petition, and/or have questions about it. Some people just want to have conversations, often about unrelated things. Sometimes they won't want to stop talking!
Meanwhile, most people you ask to sign will simply refuse, or more frequently just ignore you and keep walking. Often you will be standing there for many minutes with people just passing by, and then you'll get a flurry of people stopping to sign, more than you can easily accommodate at once (yes you can, if you are well prepared, have multiple petitions on separate clipboards with pens on them ready for signers, but there is a danger here too, because the less attention you are paying to someone as they sign, the more likely they are to do it incorrectly. Sometimes when a person is willing to sign, it will turn out they aren't registered to vote in San Francisco. Even if you specifically ask for registered voters in SF, some people will say "Sure!" and then proceed to sign and write down an address in Oakland or San Mateo. Some people who aren't registered will be willing to register to vote on the spot, if you have voter registration forms with you, but filling out that longer form typically takes several minutes, and then there's still the petition to sign. Nevertheless, those signatures are like gold, because a signature for which there is a properly completed accompanying voter form with a matching name and address is virtually certain to be valid.
While you sometimes have to gently let people know you're busy and have to get back to work, I think it's a good idea to take a little time to talk with folks who want a bit more interaction and not just try to process them as fast as possible as if they are products on an assembly line. Doing that can be off-putting and make them feel, understandably, that you don't respect or care about them (this is a danger of the "marketing paradigm" generally, which can lead toward a view of people as demographics or mass target audiences to be manipulated, numbers to meet sales goals or quotas, etc., rather than as individuals. Most people don't want to be marketed to!) Don't forget also that some signatures will turn out to be invalid despite your best efforts, and invalid signatures count for nothing. If they slip past you, they can hurt the overall validity rate of a petition drive, meaning more signatures getting tossed out. And the faster you work, the higher your invalidity rate is likely to be.
Final point -- the city isn't paying anyone to gather candidate signatures. They just charge you $.50 less on the filing fee for each valid signature you turn in. When I referred to people working for less than minimum wage, I meant in terms of the monetary value of their efforts to a campaign, not that they would be working directly for a paycheck.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
