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.