On July 21, 2014, the California State Appeals Court, Third District, again ruled that the Secretary of State does not have the duty to check the qualifications of presidential candidates before placing them on the ballot. Dummett v Bowen, C073763. Here is the six-page decision.

The decision mentions the Ninth Circuit opinion Lindsay v Bowen, 750 F.3d 1061 (2014), which says that the Secretary of State may keep presidential candidates off the ballot if she believes they do not meet the constitutional qualifications. But the Dummett decision says that while the Secretary of State may have the power to exclude unqualified presidential candidates, it does not follow logically that she must therefore investigate those qualifications. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.

The Florida legislature will reconvene this week to work on new U.S. House districts. See this story. The story does not say how the legislature will deal with the problem that candidate qualification has already closed for this year’s primaries, which are on August 26. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.

On July 23, Political Scientists Boris Shor and Nolan McCarty released an updated study of polarization in state legislatures. They find that California still has the nation’s most polarized legislature, just as it did in 2011, before California has used the top-two system. See here. Washington state has the nation’s fourth most polarized legislature, following California, Colorado, and Arizona.

The data for the updated study can be found here. Shor and McCarty had published their original research in 2011, so the comparison between the new data and the 2011 data is useful for seeing changes.