On December 13, the California Secretary of State released the final official vote totals. The only declared presidential write-in candidate, Peter Sonski of the American Solidarity Party, received 2,939. In 2020 the party’s presidential nominee had polled 2,605 write-ins in California.
Cornel West and Shiva Ayyadurai, presidential candidates who filed for write-in status in most of the states in which they were not on the ballot, did not file in California because the write-in filing procedure is so difficult. It requires the candidate to recruit 54 candidates for presidential elector, and 54 more candidates for alternate presidential elector. All 108 individuals must fill out a notarized declaration form. This law is discriminatory, because presidential elector candidates for parties that are on the ballot do not need to file any paperwork. Instead their party simply files a list containing their names and addresses with the Secretary of State.
Getting 108 people is not difficult. They are just lazy.
Considering California used to require only a single slate of elector candidates for write ins and not an additional complete list of alternate elector candidates, the law is indeed unjust. Especially considering write in candidates for president are extraordinarily unlikely to carry the state and receive any electoral votes in the first place.