Before attempting to install your trampoline, always lay out the pieces and make sure all the pieces are complete. Recommended to have at least 2 person install. First, connect the top frame. Some trampolines come with t-joints and some come with welded joints. T-joints are always better than welded joints, because welded joints, after jumping and vibration over time will eventually crack. As for t-joints, there is no cracking. As soon as top rails are connected, work on the legs next. Connect the leg extensions to the w-legs. Raise the leg extensions and connect to the top rail frame. Now, the frame should be fully completed. Next, install the jumping mat. Start by hooking the jumping mat at 12 o’clock, then 6 o’clock, then 3 o’clock, then 9 o’clock. As soon as the four corner springs are on, work your way around the trampoline. Make sure to not overload the springs on one side over the other. Try to evenly work your way around the trampoline with the springs. Overloading the springs on one side before the other can put a lot of stress on the other side.

While there are lots of different round trampoline manufacturers out there, most of the installation jobs are pretty similar. Follow the manual to set up the frame according to the manufacture. Some trampolines may have more legs then others. 16, 15 and 14ft trampolines should have a minimum of 6 U-Legs. It may seem like a lot but it’s good for the stability of the trampoline. Any size below 12 normally has about 4 U-Legs. Once you have the frame all set up, it is time to put on the jumping mat. This is the most important part. If you do it incorrect you may end up over stretching a spring, or even hurt yourself. Make sure you lay the mat down on the ground inside the frame. Next attached all the springs to the jumping mat. 16 ft trampoline should have 120 springs, 15 ft trampoline; 100 springs, and 14 ft trampoline; 96 springs. Make sure you have a trampoline spring tool. You will not be able to setup the mat without it. The spring will potentially pop up and hit you in the face if you do without the spring tool. And please make sure you wear gloves. Hook the first spring on.

The next spring you hook on should be the one in the opposite side. So look at it as if it’s a clock. The 12 first then the 6. Then the 3 and 9. 2 and the 7, and so on and so forth. This is very important to put the spring in like this because it does not over stretch the springs. If you go from one spring to the next it will make it almost impossible to put in the very last spring. Once you hook up the springs in the opposite clock formation, put in every 3 springs. Count 3 spots and one spring, and another 3 spots. Once that’s finish then you can go ahead and put in the springs in whatever order you like.

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Many things can affect fairness of the vote. For example:

* the openness of the contest to willing candidates

* the ease with which people can vote and gain access to information on candidates

* the vote counting method

* the integrity of the vote harvest, vote counting and result reporting

* the existence and transparency of an audit trail

* ease with which voters can confirm that their vote was recorded and counted correctly, and

* the time, cost and resources required to run a vote.

The choice between an online voting system, paper voting system or hybrid voting system can affect all these aspects of the vote fairness. As the manager of BigPulse.com, a firm that has specialized in high security online voting for ten years, my bias is clearly declared towards online voting and in some cases hybrid voting.

Security and protection of anonymity are the hardest to get right in any voting system, requiring many years of testing in electronic voting systems. However a properly tested online voting system can offer many advantages for security, transparency, accessibility, flexibility and cost.

A flexible online voting system will cater for many vote counting methods. The choice of vote counting method is an important consideration in fairness, for example first-past-the- post voting (FPTP) , Single Transferable Vote (STV), Instant-runoff voting (IRV) or range voting – and each method can produce different winners.

However it is not always clear which voting counting method provides the best measurement of majority opinion as there is not always a definitive mathematical answer to this question.

For example a single round vote FPTP contest with three or more candidates can produce a winner which never wins in a paired contest with any other candidate, while it is possible that a losing candidate in a FPTP vote contest may win in any paired contest. Most people will agree that in this case the FPTP result is not fair and an alternative voting method that comes closer to emulating the paired result is fairer. Preferential voting, that is, ranked voting methods and FPTP with multiple rounds of voting tend to reduce this risk of eliminating candidates that do better in paired contests.

Maximizing the degree of proportional representation and minimizing the incentive for strategic voting are two important measures of fairness. Proportional representation means the elected candidates represent the natural divisions within the electorate. Strategic voting means voting for what you think is the best possible or likely outcome even if it means not voting according to your true preferences – for example in a contest with three or more candidates, voters can be tempted to guess how others will vote and attempt to vote in a manner that gives the best likely result, rather than voting their true preferences.

A degree of proportional representation is possible in contests with more than one winner, the more winners the more proportional it can be. In this case the form of preferential or ranked voting known as Single Transferable Vote is fairer than FPTP because the Single Transferable Vote is much better than FPTP at producing proportional representation. However in a single winner contest (known as instant-runoff in the case of Single Transferable Vote), neither system can produce proportional representation, although Single Transferable Vote may be considered fairer in the sense that it leaves the door open to proportional representation.

If elimination of strategic voting is the criteria of fairness then the fair choice between FPTP and instant-runoff is not quite so obvious as it depends on the number of candidates and how many rounds of voting can be tolerated with FPTP voting. For example, if only one candidate is eliminated after each round of voting then, from the perspective of strategic voting, the FPTP vote is just as fair as instant run off and also allows people to simply vote their first preference in each round of voting.

However FPTP is inferior to instant-runoff when more than one candidate is eliminated after any round of FPTP voting. Also with multiple round FPTP voting, voter fatigue, cost and time delay may all impact on fairness. For example a contest with 10 candidates can require up to nine rounds of voting using FPTP if it is to match the fairness of an instant runoff vote. The instant-runoff vote requires only one round of voting.

Learn more about electronic voting system.