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Act Creating an Electoral Commission, January 29, 1877.

AN ACT to provide for and regulate the counting of votes for President and Vice President, and the decision of questions arising thereon, for the term commencing March fourth, anno Domini eighteen hundred and seventy-seven.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Senate and House of Representatives shall meet in the hall of the House of Representatives, at the hour of one o’clock post meridian, on the first Thursday in February, anno Domini eighteen hundred and seventy-seven; and the President of the Senate shall be their presiding officer. Two tellers shall be previously appointed on the part of the Senate, and two on the part of the House of Representatives, to whom shall be handed, as they are opened by the President of the Senate, all the certificates, and papers purporting to be certificates, of the electoral votes, which certificates and papers shall be opened, presented, and acted upon in the alphabetical order of the States, beginning with the letter A; and said tellers having then read the same in the presence and hearing of the two houses shall make a list of the votes as they shall appear from the said certificates; and the votes having been ascertained and counted as in this act provided, the result of the same shall be delivered to the President of the Senate, who shall thereupon announce the state of the vote, and the names of the persons, if any, elected, which announcement shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons elected President and Vice President of the United States, and, together with a list of the votes, be entered on the journals of the two houses. Upon such reading of any such certificate or paper when there shall be only one return from a State, the President of the Senate shall call for objections, if any. Every objection shall be made in writing, and shall state clearly and concisely, and without argument, the ground thereof, and shall be signed by at least one Senator and one Member of the House of Representatives before the same shall be received. When all objections so made to any vote or paper from a State shall have been received and read, the Senate shall thereupon withdraw and such objections shall be submitted to the Senate for its decision, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall, in like manner, submit such objections to the House of Representatives for its decision, and no electoral vote or votes from any State from which but one return has been received shall be rejected except by the affirmative vote of the two houses. When the two houses have voted, they shall immediately again meet, and the presiding officer shall then announce the decision of the question submitted.

And I do not see anything in that posting or anywhere else that makes it a requirement for such a question to be asked. Nor do I see anything to infer that such a question is “traditional” as the original poster stated. Perhaps you can enlighten me?

Watch the certification ceremony of 2008 here -- and beginning at 2:00 you may watch the same ceremony of 2001.
Objections were asked for, and received, in 2001 and were not in 2009. There is also a You Tube video of the certification process from 2005, but I cannot find it right now.

The question is not so much a matter of "tradition" as one of code.

3 U.S.C. § 15, Congress is directed to be in session on the appropriate date to count the electoral votes for President, with the President of the Senate presiding. The statute further directs that the electoral votes be counted, and then the results be presented to the President of the Senate, who shall then announce the state of the vote. The statute then provides a mechanism for objections to be registered and resolved.