The literature on legislative voting either explicitly excludes free votes from its analysis, does not distinguish them from other recorded votes, or analyses only topic-specific subsets of them. This research note shows all three approaches to be problematic, and argues for a reconsideration of how free votes are approached in the literature. Drawing on a dataset covering all recorded votes in the German Bundestag (1949-2021), and analysing the topics, initiators and voting behaviour on all free votes held, it is shown that free votes are frequent, address a broad range of issues, and display substantial variation in legislative behaviour. Most importantly, there is a strong indication that free votes are held on topics on which parties refrain from taking a position. The findings have substantial implications for the study of parliamentary floor voting.