Leveling seat

Leveling seats (Danish: tillægsmandat, Swedish: utjämningsmandat, Norwegian: utjevningsmandater, Icelandic: jöfnunarsæti, German: Ausgleichsmandat), commonly known also as adjustment seats, are an election mechanism employed for many years by all Nordic countries (except Finland) in elections for their national legislatures. In 2013, Germany also introduced national leveling seats for their national parliament, the Bundestag. The electoral reform in Germany in 2023 removed the leveling seats, and replaced them with Zweitstimmendeckung.^{[1][clarification needed]} Leveling seats are seats of additional members elected to supplement the members directly elected by each constituency. The purpose of these additional seats is to ensure that each party's share of the total seats is roughly proportional to the party's overall shares of votes at the national level.