Update: Electoral college to elect Estonian president after three inconclusive races

The next Estonian president will be elected by an electoral college after another two runoffs at the parliament on Tuesday resulted in no winner.

Neither Estonia's former prime minister and former EU commissioner Siim Kallas nor former education minister Mailis Reps got the necessary 68 votes, two thirds of the 101 votes, needed to win.

The electoral college will now convene in late September to make another attempt at choosing the country's next head of state.

In the third voting round on Tuesday afternoon, Kallas got 42 votes and Reps 26 votes. Members of IRL, the Free Party, and the Estonian Conservative People's Party abstained as expected.

This outcome means that the presidential campaign will continue for another few weeks until the electoral college convenes on Sept. 24.

Both Reps and Kallas will automatically be candidates for president at the college as they participated in the third round of elections, Estonian Broadcasting corporation reported.

For other possible candidates, the nomination procedure will start over. Each of them will need 21 members of the electoral college to nominate them.

The college of 335 members is more than three times the size of the Riigikogu (parliament), with all 101 MPs of the latter participating in addition to 234 representatives of local government councils. Representatives will be chosen seven days before the election.

The Election Commission will register candidates four to two days before the election takes place. On the election day, there will be only two rounds. To win, a candidate needs more than 50 percent of the vote.

If the first round does not produce a winner, the second round that follows is between the two candidates that got the most votes in the first round.

Estonia's outgoing President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has spent two five-year terms in office and is due to stand down in October.

The president has twice been elected in parliament in recent history -- in 1992 and in 2011.

In 1996, 2001 and 2006, the Estonian president was elected by the electoral college.

The electoral college is formed of the members of parliament (101) and representatives of the local government councils. The number of representatives of local governments is determined on the basis of the number of Estonian citizens with the right to vote in the rural municipality or city.

In 1996, the electoral body had 374 members while in 2006, it had 345 members (two rural municipalities did not elect their representatives). The number of members decreased because the number of local governments became smaller as a result of merger of rural municipalities and cities.

According to local media reports, the electoral college will be called on Sept. 24 at National theatre in Tallinn for the final voting. Endit