Colorado Ballot Restrictions Struck Down

01/12/99 By RICHARD CARELLI Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) The Supreme Court today struck down Colorado's preferred method of regulating voter initiatives, ruling unconstitutional three provisions it found "excessively restrictive of political speech."

Providing important new guidelines for other states as well, the court said Colorado went too far in regulating the circulation of petitions for such measures.

About half the states allow ballot initiatives, and voters increasingly are using them to bypass legislatures and make law.

Specifically, the court said states may not require: a) People who circulate petitions be registered to vote. b) Petition circulators to wear badges bearing their names and identifying them as "paid" or "volunteer." c) Initiative backers to file monthly reports with state officials identifying paid petition circulators and how much they were paid.

"The First Amendment requires us to be vigilant in making these judgments," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court, "to guard against undue hindrances to political conversations and the exchange of ideas."

She said the invalidated provisions "are not warranted by the state interests -- administrative efficiency, fraud detection, informing voters -- alleged to justify those restrictions." Ginsburg said Colorado may, and does, employ other methods to serve those purposes.

The vote to strike down the badge-wearing requirement was 8-1, with only Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist saying the restriction should be upheld. The vote to strike down the other two requirements was 6-3, with Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen G. Breyer joining Rehnquist as dissenters.

Joining Ginsburg in voting against each of the requirements were Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter and Clarence Thomas.

All three requirements had been invalidated by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after they were challenged by a group of state residents and a public interest group, the American Constitutional Law Foundation.

Colorado's attempt to reverse the appeals court ruling got a frosty reception when the case was argued before the justices in October.

In Colorado, supporters must collect signatures amounting to at least 5 percent of the total votes cast in the most recent race for secretary of state to get a measure on the ballot.

After a record 10 initiatives were placed on the state's ballot in 1992, the Legislature passed a law that imposed various requirements, including the three at issue in today's decision.

Colorado earlier had reacted to ballot initiatives begun by commercial interests, such as backers of legalized gambling, by banning paid petition circulators. The nation's highest court struck down that ban in 1988, ruling that it interfered too much with "core political speech."

The case is Buckley vs. American Constitutional Law Foundation, 97-930.

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