Electoral College set to affirm Obama re-election

Tradition trumped suspense Monday as members of the Electoral College cast the official, final votes in an exhausting 2012 presidential election, a constitutional formality on President Barack Obama's march to a second term.

The rite playing in state capitols involved party luminaries and tireless activists carrying out the will of each state's voters. The popular vote from state-to-state dictates whether Democratic or Republican electors get the honor, but the outcome is not in doubt.

Obama is on course to get 332 votes to Romney's 206, barring defectors.

In New Hampshire, electors supporting Obama signed their four ballots and sealed the envelopes with wax that has been in the secretary of state's office for more than 70 years.

"It's been a long haul for all of us," said state Secretary of State Bill Gardner, alluding to New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary that sparked intense campaigning there for more than a year.

In Mississippi, which Republican Mitt Romney carried comfortably, six men chosen earlier as electors met in a small committee room in the state Capitol and cast their votes for Romney. Well aware they were doing so in a lost cause, they opted for humor. The state's Republican governor, Phil Bryant, joked that Billy Mounger, an 86-year-old elector, probably wished to vote for Calvin Coolidge, a renowned small-government conservative president in the 1920s.