SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN COLORADO BALLOT INITIATIVES SYSTEM

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:

- -People who circulate petitions be registered to vote.

- -Petition circulators to wear badges bearing their names and identifying
them as ``paid'' or ``volunteer.''

- -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.