“Are you a registered voter in California?”
Ring Road has been filled with this shouted question for weeks on end, as students are repeatedly asked to sign propositions, initiatives and petitions. In trying to avoid further harassment — and often in a rush to get to a class or club meeting further down the road — many students tend to sign these papers without reading them. For some, this is a political habit that will last for decades.
Many political routines begin in youth. Numerous studies have shown that voting is habitual. People who vote early in life are likely to continue doing so, with the same methods and practices they learned long ago. Colleges house many of the country’s newest voters, making university campuses a central influence on the next generation’s voting habits. Petition booths specifically aimed at college students are creating harmful customs of carelessness and manipulation.
One of the worst habits these booths encourage is signing petitions without reading them. When glancing at a booth, it may seem obvious what initiatives it supports. Oftentimes, the signs have simple, colorful sayings like “Crush I.C.E.” or “Tax the Billionaires.” But petitions are rarely that simple. Such vague marketing could lead to students accidentally signing their support for side effects or causes that weren’t as clearly advertised.
When voting on any political issue, it’s important to do research about its impacts and supporters. Oftentimes, corporations run large campaigns to rebrand legislation that the public may not naturally support. This manipulative advertising is even worse in states that have a proposition system, including California. To get a piece of legislation into the election, corporations currently need less than 550,000 signatures, or 5% of registered voters for the last gubernatorial election. This makes coercive petition booths a highly beneficial investment.
Many companies or organizations will pay petition circulators to work at petition tables on college campuses and in other areas. Circulators are paid for every signature they get on assigned initiatives, incentivizing them to move students in and out of their booths as fast as possible in order to make space for new clients. Big signs with flashy slogans entice people, but when students approach the circulators there is often little opportunity to ask questions or pause to do research. Instead, a clipboard is shoved into each person’s hands as they’re asked to sign page after page of complex legal text, sometimes without accompanying explanation.
The hassle of petition booths isn’t limited to their tables, either. The circulators call out to people, walk around with large picket signs and even try handing clipboards to students simply passing by. They also specifically set up their booths in the middle of highly trafficked areas. When three or four of these tables are located between Middle Earth and Mesa Court, there is constant, insidious pressure to give in.
Despite the harmful impacts of these campaign tables, petitions are not a bad thing. Signing them is often a way for students with limited time and money to support causes they believe in, and propositions are a cornerstone of California’s governance. But the insidious tactics of these on-campus circulators teach students to disregard the research and healthy suspicion that accompanies pragmatic civic engagement.
The only way to resist such a negative influence is to actively counter it with intentionality. When approaching a petition, everyone should make sure to read once and think twice.
Ruby Goodwin is an Opinion Intern for the winter 2026 quarter. She can be reached at regoodwi@uci.edu.
Edited by Rebecca Do and Zara Baker
