I haven't (yet) seen an initiative petition that asks for a signer's SSN. But I have seen some that ask for the signer's date of birth, which is also legally unnecessary (as the Secretary of State's office has confirmed to me) and puts the signer at risk for identity theft.

@1: No where does it state that the writer was asked for their SSN.

Is simply says "I almost gave you my social security number". Possibly they were asked for their phone number but were so smitten with the signature gatherer that they almost gave them their SSN.

But who knows as this is a poorly written I Anonymous. Are there no other people submitting them?

@3 is correct. This is nothing more than a fond and nostalgic look back to the days of Missed Connections posts. Worth a shot though, I suppose and good luck to them both. Ballot initiatives are such a nice idea in theory, but in practice.... Yeesh.

I volunteered with the House Our Neighbors I-135 signature gathering. You have to be a registered voter to sign a voter initiative petition. Each volunteer had 2 voter registration forms on their clipboard(which require last 4 digits of your social security number if you don’t have a Washington State drivers license) and we would register folks to vote on the spot. It was pretty common at the Capitol Hill farmers market where lots of young people who move to Seattle recently and don’t drive (so they never bothered to get a WA license) are shopping. We would register about 10 people a week to vote while gathering signatures for I-135. Most were comfortable handing over the voter registration form for the campaign to deliver to the King County Voting agency. Some were not comfortable, and took the form home to mail in, but they probably didn’t have a stamp, but maybe read about stamps in history class.

'giving them the
SS number' is a
Euphemism.

my Wife
ran away
with the guy
who Stole my Identity.