Barack Obama was then elected President and Joe Biden was elected Vice President.
The people who vote for President and Vice President in this country all do so on the same day, the Monday after the second Wednesday in December. This year that fell on December 15. The process of their getting to be voters is kind of interesting.
The people who nominate the people who get to vote do so on the second Tuesday in September except in Maine and Nebraska. The results then get transmitted by the states to Congress between January 3rd and January 20th.
All the stuff that goes on with the primaries, campaigns, contributions, canvassing, conventions, super delegates and popular voting in November is just a sideshow. Suprisingly it hasn't been that way for a couple of centuries like you might think, it actually used to be done differently.
Up untill about 1812 the people who voted for most Presidents were selected by the State Legislators. The practice continued on in some states until the Civil War, and even after that every once in a while. It was proposed as a necessity in the election of 2000. In the elections of 1876, 1888, and 2000, the candidate receiving the plurality of the nationwide popular vote did not become President. In 1824 and 2000 the candidate receiving the plurality of both the popular and electoral vote did not become President.
Now you might wonder if there has traditionally been any linkage to how politicians get elected, or sometimes selected, and how judges and other persons of interest get involved in the process of selection.
You might wonder how it is that in a campaign where hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to select a president, the real decisions were made by another process inside and outside the state political parties, not entirely outside the popular vote, but not entirely responsive to it either.
With some people comparing the $10 million dollars worth of Clinton campaign debt retired by Obama to Blogo's attempt to sell Obama's Senate seat, and suggesting this kind of wheeling and dealing and marketing the decision making process has practically defined American politics since the days of our founding fathers, the historical determination of who does what, where and how in December can be fascinating.