Cite as: 525 U. S. 182 (1999)
Syllabus
requirement that petition circulators be registered voters, and also held portions of the badge and disclosure requirements invalid as trenching unnecessarily and improperly on political expression. This Court agreed to review the Court of Appeals dispositions concerning the registration, badge, and disclosure requirements. See 522 U. S. 1107.
Precedent guides this review. In Meyer v. Grant, 486 U. S. 414, this Court struck down Colorado's prohibition of payment for the circulation of ballot-initiative petitions, concluding that petition circulation is "core political speech" for which First Amendment protection is "at its zenith." Id., at 422, 425. This Court has also recognized, however, that "there must be a substantial regulation of elections if they are to be fair and honest and if some sort of order . . . is to accompany the democratic processes." Storer v. Brown, 415 U. S. 724, 730; see Timmons, 520 U. S., at 358; Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780, 788.
Held: The Tenth Circuit correctly separated necessary or proper ballot-access controls from restrictions that unjustifiably inhibit the circulation of ballot-initiative petitions. Pp. 191-205.
(a) States have considerable leeway to protect the integrity and reliability of the ballot-initiative process, as they have with respect to election processes generally. "[N]o litmus-paper test" will separate valid ballot-access provisions from invalid interactive speech restrictions, and this Court has come upon "no substitute for the hard judgments that must be made." Storer, 415 U. S., at 730. But the First Amendment requires vigilance in making those judgments, to guard against undue hindrances to political conversations and the exchange of ideas. See Meyer, 486 U. S., at 421. The Court is satisfied that, as in Meyer, the restrictions in question significantly inhibit communication with voters about proposed political change, and are not warranted by the state interests (administrative efficiency, fraud detection, informing voters) alleged to justify those restrictions. This judgment is informed by other means Colorado employs to accomplish its regulatory purposes. Pp. 191-192.
(b) Beyond question, Colorado's registration requirement drastically reduces the number of persons, both volunteer and paid, available to circulate petitions. That requirement produces a speech diminution of the very kind produced by the ban on paid circulators at issue in Meyer. Both provisions "limi[t] the number of voices who will convey [the initiative proponents'] message" and, consequently, cut down "the size of the audience [proponents] can reach." Meyer, 486 U. S., at 422, 423.
The ease with which qualified voters may register to vote does not lift the burden on speech at petition circulation time. There are individuals for whom, as the trial record shows, the choice not to register
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