surrogate
Muse
The absolute penultimate step - the very last thing that officially happens before the oath of office is given - is that the president of the Senate - Mike Pence in this case - has to announce the results of the vote. I wondered early on whether he would just announce Trump the winner, on the basis that there could be no norm or expectation put above screwing around with by this bunch of *************.
However, we recently saw Pence swear in Mike Kelly as Senator (Arizona), so perhaps Mike Pence has a single shred of political decency left in him.
I think Pence is in an interesting situation now. I'm sure he was hoping to be the R candidate in 2024 regardless of how this election turned out. Now there is a non-zero chance of Trump running again in 24 with someone else as the VP candidate. Unless he is a complete moron, he knows he can't trust any Trump promise to choose him as a running mate again, nor is he likely to beat Trump in the primaries.