alteration of §20 of the constitution. An election is immediate if the voters will determines the result directly. The process of an election based on lists compiled by the political parties is, however, compatible with the principle of an immediate election. An election is considered free if the government does not compel the people's voting decision in terms of content. According to the Federal Constitutional Court's dispensation of justice the principle of a free ballot would not be harmed if a compulsory vote was introduced by the Federal Electoral Law. Electoral advertising at government expense would, however, be incompatible with this principle of electoral law. However, the Federal Government (made up of different political parties) is allowed to conduct public relations if its neutrality is strictly preserved. Elections are confidential if the voter's decision is not known to anybody else. The German Parliament's voting law even states that no elector is allowed to announce his decision in the polling station. Postal voting is problematic because the secrecy of the ballot is not guaranteed; it has therefore to be taken as an exceptional case. Since the election's more important basic principle of universal suffrage would otherwise be violated, postal votes are admissible. In principle an election is considered equal if all electoral votes have the same weight. This is for example not the case if constituencies differ considerably in size or if the way these constituencies are politically controlled causes advantages or disadvantages for certain groups of people (gerrymandering). For electoral lawmaking the most difficult part in terms of constitutional principles is the equality of the election. On the one hand, certain inequalities are unavoidable as the constituencies can not be of exactly equal size and the turnout, too, is not homogenous. On the other hand, the (the 'overhang', or extra seats in Parliament a party gets due to gaining more constituency seats than it is entitled to according to Parliament's proportional seating principle) and a (negative vote weight: an unwanted outcome changing an elector's vote to the opposite of their intended political will expressed with that vote) might influence the “one man, one vote” principle. On 3 July 2008, the Federal Constitutional Court declared the paradox of the to be unconstitutional. The court allowed three years for these changes, so the 2009 federal election was not affected. The changes were due by 30 June 2011, but appropriate legislation was not