U.S. JUDGE BLOCKS COLORADO PETITION MEASURE

Ruling Will Help Activist
Efforts On Ballot Initiatives

DENVER - Conservative activists convinced a federal judge Friday to block a
state law that makes it harder to put initiatives on the ballot.

U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer's ruling opens the door for Jon
Caldara to pursue a ballot initiative that opposes the federal health
care reform bill that President Barack Obama championed this year.

"At this point, it's full steam ahead," Caldara said. "I'm sorry the
wheels of justice turn so slowly. We started this lawsuit months ago."

Caldara and other activists - including the leader of a marijuana
legalization group - sued the state in federal court over a 2009 law
passed by the Legislature. The law required ballot campaigns to pay
their petition circulators by the hour, not per signature, for at
least 80 percent of their paychecks.

Most companies that specialize in petition campaigns rely on a small
cadre of 250 to 600 people who move from state to state and work on a
per-signature basis, according to testimony in the hearing last week.

Caldara, head of the Independence Institute, said the Legislature's
hourly wage mandate would make his campaign too expensive. Brimmer
said the 2009 law could raise the price as much as $1 per signature.

Ballot campaigns need more than 76,000 valid signatures from Colorado
voters, and most campaigns try to collect nearly twice that number to
be safe.

The law could also discourage the best petition gatherers from working
in Colorado, and that is a violation of the campaigns' First Amendment
rights, Brimmer wrote.

Mason Tvert, head of the pro-marijuana group SAFER, said he and allies
would decide in the next few days whether to pursue a ballot campaign
to legalize pot possession.

"The petition process will be far more accessible to us now," Tvert
said.

Time is short for Tvert and Caldara. The state constitution gives both
campaigns until Aug. 2 to submit 76,000 signatures to the secretary of
state.

The 2009 bill, House Bill 1326, was popular among Democrats and
Republicans. It passed 54-11 in the House and 33-0 in the Senate.
Legislators at the time said per-signature pay creates an incentive
for fraud.

Brimmer, though, found that hourly workers are no better or worse when
it comes to fraud or invalid signatures.

Rich Coolidge, spokesman for Secretary of State Bernie Buescher, said
his office was looking over the decision with lawyers from the
attorney general's office.

"We're continuing to review the order with our legal counsel and are
anxious to hear back on the other outstanding issues," Coolidge said
in an e-mail.

The plaintiffs challenged other parts of the law, too. Brimmer said he
would rule on them in a future order.

In issuing Friday's temporary restraining order against the state law,
Brimmer said the plaintiffs have a good chance in a future hearing of
getting the law struck down permanently.

So far, only four initiatives are on the November 2010 ballot. Three
would limit the government's power to tax and use credit. A fourth
would define a fertilized egg as a human being.