SALT LAKE CITY -- In Utah, all ballot-qualified political parties can nominate candidates for partisan office. But thanks to the single-member district plurality system used to decide most political contests, some candidates are more equal than others.

To promote its state and local candidates, while bringing attention to the disparities between incumbent political parties and non-incumbent political parties, the Libertarian Party of Utah reprised the cast of caricatures featured in its full-page advertisement in the 2006 Football Preview in a new ad for the 2006 Utah Election Guide published October 25, 2006 by the Newspaper Agency Corporation.

According to mid-2006 voter registration data compiled by Ballot Access News, most Utah voters aren't registered with either of the two incumbent parties (900,784 are unaffiliated, 376,096 are registered Republican, and 117,958 are registered Democrat).

Several Utah Libertarian candidates are advocating for the adoption of more competitive and representative electoral systems in their campaigns.

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Libertarian Party of Utah members and friends will also participate in a news conference and rally outside the offices of the Salt Lake Tribune, near 100 South and 400 West in Salt Lake City, on Friday, November 3, 2006 at 5:00 p.m.

"Libertarians champion free speech, which includes the right to include and exclude the content of that speech. And I have no ethical objection to allocating political coverage in rough proportion to a political constituency's popular support," says Rob Latham, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Utah.

"But strictly bipartisan election coverage and analysis that omits any mention of candidates nominated by non-incumbent parties -- essentially treating us as Orwellian 'unpersons' -- violates journalistic ethics."

"And the Tribune's apologist 'reader advocate' Connie Coyne needs to come clean about whether her newspaper has gone 'pay-to-play' in its political coverage, and explain why the Tribune reports political news the way it does," says Latham.