194
Opinion of the Court
Trial testimony complemented the statistical picture. Typical of the submissions, initiative proponent Paul Grant testified: "Trying to circulate an initiative petition, you're drawing on people who are not involved in normal partisan politics for the most part. . . . [L]arge numbers of these people, our natural support, are not registered voters." 1 Tr. 128.
As earlier noted, see supra, at 190, the District Court found from the statistical and testimonial evidence: "The record does show that the requirement of registration limits the number of persons available to circulate and sign [initiative] petitions and, accordingly, restricts core political speech." 870 F. Supp., at 1002. Because the requirement's source was a referendum approved by the people of Colorado, however, the District Court deemed the prescription "not subject to any level of [judicial] scrutiny." Ibid. That misjudgment was corrected by the Tenth Circuit: "The voters may no more violate the United States Constitution by enacting a ballot issue than the general assembly may by enacting legislation." 120 F. 3d, at 1100.
The Tenth Circuit reasoned that the registration requirement placed on Colorado's voter-eligible population produces a speech diminution of the very kind produced by the ban on paid circulators at issue in Meyer. See 120 F. 3d, at 1100. We agree. The requirement that circulators be not merely voter eligible, but registered voters, it is scarcely debatable given the uncontested numbers, see supra, at 193, and n. 15, decreases the pool of potential circulators as certainly as that pool is decreased by the prohibition of payment to circulators.16 Both provisions "limi[t] the number of voices who
voter-eligible but unregistered residents to registered residents in Colorado is not extraordinary in comparison to those proportions in other States. See generally ibid.
16 Persons eligible to vote, we note, would not include "convicted drug felons who have been denied the franchise as part of their punishment," see post, at 229 (Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting), and could similarly be
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