Walking to lunch yesterday I met Alex, left, who was gathering signatures for a city charter amendment I've been following. After politely telling him I already knew about the campaign, thanks, and walking past, I backed up. I watched him talk to a couple people. I've worked as a street canvasser before, but never a signature-gatherer. I wanted to know more.

We chatted for a minute about his job, which is migratory. "I've worked all over the country," he told me—here in Washington, where he's from, and California and Maryland. He gets a call from an intermediary when a campaign has work, and he shuttles off to wherever he's needed. "You kind of live out of motels," he says. He'll be here for about two or three weeks, he thinks, gathering all the signatures necessary—the campaign needs more than 30,000. I asked him how much he's making. "A dollar per signature." Is that normal? That depends, says Alex. Some campaigns pay $2 or $3 a signature. Do you make a decent amount of money? It's okay, he says. He's made as much as $1,600 a week at times. But it's easier if you know the area, he said, and he's not from Seattle, so he had to find out the hard way that downtown is mostly tourists, not local voters, and up here on the Hill, everyone's wary of canvassers asking for money. Also, he said, it's a bummer that it's spring break right now: No students.

"You're not paid by the hour, so you have to make enough to live on," he says. His friend and coworker walked over and said he'd be working all day and into the night. I said thanks, and we parted ways.