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The first thing to remember is that in Congress, the VP of the United States has almost no power at all.

In the joint session of Congress to certify a presidential election in January of the year following the election, the VP functions as the President of the Senate. That's a constitutional role. In that capacity, his only role is to vote in the event of a tie in a Senate vote. That's it.

So in this capacity, he had no authority to accept or reject any sealed certificates of electoral votes from any state. What he COULD do -- and by all accounts what VP Pence DID do on January 6th -- was to accept any motion from the floor of the joint session to object to any state's electoral votes. This happened several times. An objection is only acted upon if it is supported by at least one member of each house of Congress.

Once that happens for any given state's electors, the two houses of Congress adjourn to their respective chambers to vote on the objection. That's it.

At least one member of the House and one member of the Senate objected to Arizona's electoral votes. The Representatives and Senators went to their chambers and voted on the objection. The vote failed by a wide margin in both the House and Senate. The same thing happened with Pennsylvania.

There were other states where a House member or a Senator objected to the electoral votes, but these were the only two that met the minimum threshold of one objection from each house. All the others didn't even come to a floor vote because they didn't meet that threshold.

Keep in mind that I have assumed through this whole narrative that the process of lodging and voting on objections -- as laid out in the Electoral Count Act of 1887 -- is even constitutional. It almost certainly isn't, but for the sake of this discussion I will assume it is ... and by all appearances it looks like VP Pence followed the letter of that law in dealing with the objections from the floor in the joint session of Congress on January 6th.