Officially Official...Officially

The Constitution requires that the electoral vote certificates for President and Vice-President, cast last month in state capitols around the country, be opened during a joint session of Congress with the current Vice-President of the United States presiding.

In front of all 535 members of Congress, Electoral College certificates were tallied and Dick Cheney read the results:

Barack Obama and Joe Biden
365 votes

John McCain and Sarah Palin
173 votes

And so, after the official General Election of November 4 in which voters in each state voted for either Obama's or McCain's slate of electors, which then led to the official meeting of the Electoral College on December 15 where those slates of electors cast their official ballots as instructed by the voters of their respective states, the official Certificates of Election were officially opened in Congress today, recorded in the official records of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, and thus Barack Obama and Joe Biden were officially named President and Vice-President of the United States.

They will officially take office at noon (Eastern time) on Tuesday, January 20.

And that's official!

Below are highlights from today's (official) hour-long, Constitutionally required joint session...