TALLINN (Sputnik) – The Estonian parliament failed to elect the Baltic country’s president in the third balloting round after neither of the two candidates gained the needed votes, the chair of Estonia’s electoral committee Tuesday.
The candidate had to earn at least two-thirds of the lawmakers’ votes to win the secret ballot in parliament, or at least 68 out of 101 votes, Meelis Eerik said.
"During the vote, ruling coalition Reform Party and Social Democratic Party faction’s [Siim] Kallas obtained 42 votes. His rival Mailis Reps, put forward by the parliamentary faction of the opposition Centre Party, received 26 votes. Thirty ballots did not mark a single candidate," Eerik specified.
The election committee set September 24 as the preliminary date of the planned electoral body meeting.