August 2, 1984

A State Supreme Court justice ruled today that Governor Cuomo had exceeded his authority in ordering state employees to conduct voter registration drives in state office buildings. The justice, Harold J. Hughes of Albany, signed a preliminary injunction barring Mr. Cuomo from carrying out the plan, which was intended to register tens of thousands of voters before the November elections. Justice Hughes acted on a suit filed by the state Republican chairman, Justice Hughes said the State Legislature, not the Governor, had the authority to regulate the voter registration process and had actively excercised that authority over the years. He noted that a bill that would have set up a plan nearly identical to the one set up by Mr. Cuomo had been blocked in the Senate after it had passed the Assembly. The Assembly is controlled by the Democrats and the Senate by the Republicans. ''All citizens of the state suffer when one branch of government exceeds its authority at the expense of another,'' Justice Hughes wrote in a nine-page decision blocking the program as unconstitutional.

Behold a man out of control. His name is Francis Robert Schreiber, or Ady to his friends. On this particular afternoon, after a heavy rain, he is prowling a patch of grass and exercising his obsession. ''Oh, my God, look at the size of them,'' he says, his hand held to the side of his head. ''This is unheard of, unheard of. I have to come here tomorrow whether I want to or not. Oh boy, oh boy. I can't keep my eyes from hanging out. Edith, come here and look at this.''

Underground committees of the Solidarity movement, active in at least 20 of Poland's largest factories, have joined in a church-sponsored boycott of vodka in the hope of depriving the Government of its largest source of revenue, as well as saving the health of the Polish people. The Roman Catholic Church's sobriety campaign, which has been growing steadily over the last two years, reached a high point today, when priests in parishes all over the country led men and women in oaths pledging not to buy or drink vodka for a month. A welder close to some of the factory committees reported that he considered the two-week period a test run that he hoped would lead to longer boycotts. 'All Change Takes Time' ''You know, asking Poles to stop drinking is not so easy,'' the worker said. ''It is easier to get them out to throw stones. All change takes time.'' The man said that in addition to the appeals and church sermons, individual workers with what he called ''recognized authority'' would urge their co-workers to join the boycott.

With a gold medal on the line and the heavily favored Chinese closing in on them, the men of the United States Olympic team declined to play it safe in the finals of the team gymnastics competition Tuesday night: They went ahead and performed their riskiest routines. Their daring paid off when they captured their first gymnastics gold medal in history. ''Winning the gold was a miracle,'' said Scott Johnson, one of the six men on the team. ''It was a dream come true.'' Mitch Gaylord knew that the whole dream was resting in his muscular arms, that the gold medal the United States gymnasts were so close to winning could fall out of their hands if he fell off the high bar during the final event of the competition. And while doing his dangerous somersaulting stunt above that bar, he knew there was a good chance of falling off.

President Reagan's national security adviser said today that Moscow was misrepresenting Washington's position on proposed talks on space weapons and that ''it appears that the Soviets were not serious about their proposal.'' The security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, reading a statement to reporters in California, said the Russians were being ''disingenuous'' in portraying the American position. He said the American proposal that the talks consider offensive nuclear weapons as well as space arms was not a ''precondition,'' but a ''unilateral declaration'' of intent. A senior Administration official in California, when asked whether the conference, tentatively scheduled to open Sept. 18 in Vienna, was now dead, answered, ''We don't rule it out, but it is hard to be encouraged.'' He added that he was ''very much in doubt'' whether Moscow had ever been sincere about the talks.