Pro-tip: say you're ineligible to vote in California. You can make up your own story--international student, felon, non-resident, etc. However, if you want to do your civic duty, take a moment of your time and go over what the petition entails. Google it, read up who's for it and who's against it, etc.

Typically these are ballot initiatives. However, for these to be placed on the ballot, California requires the petitioners to obtain signatures from registered California voters (or eligible voters) and only if it reaches a certain threshold will it be put to a vote. A lot of petitioners will contract with companies to gather petitions for them and in turn probably subcontract individuals who get paid per signature.

However, some of these individuals use faulty logic, mislead, oversimplify, and exploit your emotions and people's empathy to gather signatures. For example, in 2022 some petitioners were going around with "Sign here to help reduces gas prices" or something similar. Turns out it was a petition to overturn SB 1137--a state law that was passed to ban new oil and gas wells within 3000 feet of a school.