Obama 'officially' re-elected as American president

Barack Obama was officially reelected to a second term as the American president after votes of the much-discussed Electoral College were counted and certified in a joint session of Congress on Friday.

There was no fretting about Ohio's 18 electoral votes and there was no doubt about who would take Florida's 29. Similarly, it was just a matter of reading a script to officially cast Virginia's 13.

For President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, 332 votes were caste, while Republican rival Mitt Romney and running mate Paul Ryan received 206 votes, Politico reports.

Only a handful of members of the House and Senate attended the ceremonial proceedings, as there was more audience in the galleries than members in the chamber, the paper said.

The process, which in the early days of the nation would have been more suspenseful but is now simply a constitutional formality, went off without a snag, it further reported.

The actual electors met in their respective states in December to cast their ballots and Friday's process was the counting and certifying of those ballots that were sent to Washington, the paper added.

The Electoral College, meant to provide a balance instead of a direct popular vote system, has come under fire in the past decade, however, the actual proceedings were barely a blip on the radar, taking less than 30 minutes from start to finish.

Biden and Speaker John Boehner presided over the proceedings as four members took turns reading the certificates that had been mailed by each state.

The ballots arrived in the House chamber in locked wooden boxes, held together with aged leather straps, that were proceeded in by student pages. Staff used ceremonial letter openers to excise each form from its envelope