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Pence didn’t certify anything. He presided over a joint session of Congress where the election results WERE certified. He didn’t cast a single vote in that process.

So what is his role? Ceremonial? Posing for the cameras?

This interpretation implies an inconsequential intent from the Founders, and they were serious men not given to meaningless gestures.

If the Vice President is specified by the Constitution, it is because he has a duty to preform, and that duty does not include being a rubber stamp.

What's the VP's role? Let's see what the 12th Amendment says:

The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted.

1. The VP is acting as the President of the Senate in this role.

2. He opens the certificates submitted by the states.

3. The electoral votes are then counted.

Now that this has all been laid out for you, will you please tell me where any of this says the Vice President can decide NOT to count some of the electoral votes that have been certified by the states before this joint session of Congress is held?

Let's keep in mind that the 12th Amendment was ratified before 1805. Provisions of the Constitution from those days have much more of a focus on some formal procedures that may seem archaic by modern standards. There was no FedEx or UPS back then, no motorized travel, no modern communications or television, and no certified U.S. mail for delivering the "certificates" described here. These certificates had to be delivered by hand, and for some states it would take days -- if not several weeks -- for the delivery to be completed.

The process laid out here was not designed to be ceremonial, but it has effectively become largely ceremonial because modern electronic communications has eliminated a lot of the uncertainties in the process that the governing bodies of the U.S. government had to deal with back then.