BAGHDAD — Iraq's parliament voted to elect Nizar Amidi as the country's president after two rounds of voting in Baghdad. The election took place five months after a parliamentary election that did not produce a bloc with a decisive majority and more than two months past a constitutional deadline for selecting a president.

No candidate secured the required two-thirds majority in the first round of voting. Amidi, a political official with one of Iraq's two main Kurdish parties, received 208 votes in that round. Muthanna Amin Nader, a parliamentarian from the Kurdistan Islamic Union bloc, received 17 votes. The roster of presidential candidates also included Iraq's Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, who ran as the candidate of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Parliament then proceeded to a second round of voting, where the winner was determined by a simple plurality rather than a two-thirds threshold. Amidi received 227 votes in the second round, while Nader received 15, securing Amidi's election to the presidency.

Amidi is a member of the political bureau of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. He was born in Dohuk province in northern Iraq and is an engineer by training. He previously served as an aide to Presidents Jalal Talabani and Fouad Massoum.

By convention in Iraq's post-2003 political system, the president is always Kurdish, the prime minister is Shiite, and the parliamentary speaker is Sunni. Under the Iraqi constitution, a president must be elected within 30 days after the first session held by a newly elected parliament. The vote to elect Amidi took place well beyond that constitutional deadline, arriving more than two months after the prescribed timeframe had expired.

With the presidency now filled, the next step in forming a new Iraqi government moves to the selection of a prime minister. Under the constitution, the newly elected president has 15 days to task the nominee of the largest parliamentary bloc with forming a government and becoming prime minister.

The Shiite Coordination Framework, a coalition of Iran-allied parties that represents the largest bloc in parliament, announced in January that it would nominate former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for the premiership. That nomination faced opposition from Washington. The coalition will have to decide whether to proceed with al-Maliki's nomination or select another candidate. Mohammed Shia al-Sudani had been al-Maliki's main rival for the nomination before stepping aside.