list votes. If a delegate of the Bundestag who was elected in a constituency in which his or her political party gained a number of excess mandates resigns, his or her seat remains free and cannot be used by the following candidate on the party's list. At the beginning of the 2002 legislative period the Bundestag consisted of 603 delegates. When SPD delegate Anke Hartnagel died and the head of SPD in Thuringia, Christoph Matschie, resigned, this regulation was enacted. As a consequence, the 15th Bundestag consisted of 601 members. Classification and assessment of the system The Bundestag, Germany's parliament, is elected according to the principle of proportional representation. In some cases, this system is also referred to as mixed member proportional representation. This, however, is incorrect considering the fact that the mandates gained directly in each federal state are compared to the number of second vote mandates and any differences are compensated with candidates from the party's list at the state level, if, according to the principle of proportional representation, a party gains more second vote mandates than direct mandates. Therefore, it is more accurate to call it additional member system. However, the so-called mixing election system can be described as parallel voting whereas a certain number of representatives is elected through one of the systems and the other independent representatives are elected through the other system without any mandates being taken over by both of the systems. Voting for the Bundestag is complicated. In particular, the importance of the second vote is sometimes underestimated. However, the voting system combines many of the advantages of both the plurality and the proportional voting system. Time has proven that this voting system mainly allows for a proportional distribution of seats, stable governments, change of governments, the possibility of new parties joining the parliament, and in comparison to the Reichstag, the precursor parliament of the Bundestag in the Weimar Republic, it allows for a parliament capable of acting. Presently, the big parties are not considering introducing a majority voting system like they did at the beginning of the first grand coalition in 1966. However, there has been major criticism of the federal election system, as it existed prior to 2013. The overhang seats are problematic in the sense that they distort the proportional representation (resulting from the second votes). The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany has found that this distinctive feature is