SALT LAKE CITY -- Sports fans know that fair competition requires rules that apply equally to all teams. And as sports scandals involving doping and fixing have shown, fans rightly criticize on sports radio and turn their backs on competitors who cheat.

Appealing to that sense of fairness, Utah Libertarians have placed a full-page advertisement (see below) illustrating the unfairness of the two-party system to taxpayers and voters in the 2006 Football Preview published in the Deseret Morning News and Salt Lake Tribune by the Newspaper Agency Corporation.

"Libertarians are asking fans to translate their appreciation for fair play in sports into a demand for fair play in politics," says Rob Latham, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Utah.

The ad depicts a muscled elephant and donkey, wearing robbers’ masks and bearing "Born to Spend" and "Born to Tax" tattoos, with caricatures representing "Taxpayers" and "Voters" in their stranglehold.

The masks allude to a quote by Libertarian Murray N. Rothbard: "What is the State anyway but organized banditry?"

Below the bipartisan banditos are three more caricatures bearing syringes, labeled "Mainstream Media," "Special Interests," and "War."

The text above the caricatures reads: "The two-party system is to politics what steroids are to athletics."

The text below the caricatures reads: "Both cheat us out of fair play."

The remaining text notes that most of world's democracies use more competitive and representative multi-party electoral systems, identifies the Libertarian Party of Utah and its platform of "Smaller Government, Fewer Taxes, and More Freedom," and its non-federal candidates for the 2006 general election.

To avoid reportable "federal election activity" under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, the LPUtah does not include federal candidates in its advertising.

"Earlier this year, union goon Wayne Holland for the Democrats and corporate welfare pimp Joe Cannon for the Republicans approached leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to encourage voter turnout," notes party chair Latham.

Thanks to public disgust with the appearance of collusion and bipartisan culture of corruption fostered by both "Republicrooks" and "Democons," statewide voter turnout for the primary election was 13.4 percent.

Despite feigned concern, incumbent politicians and the mainstream media rarely place responsibility for low voter turnout at the feet of the winner-take-all system, or discuss electoral systems used in most of the world's democracies that create more robust candidate competition, and greater voter participation and representation.

"Each reporter or commentator who uses the exclusionary terms 'both parties' or 'either party' reinforces the myth of the inevitability of the two-party system, and simultaneously performs a disservice to voters while journalistically fellating the members of the bipartisan political class," says Latham.

Instead of distracting the public with gimmicks like voter lotteries, campaign finance restrictions, and redistricting commissions, political correspondents should be educating voters about the unfairness of the two-party system, claims Latham, and the higher turnout that accompanies more competitive and representative electoral systems.

"That's why Libertarians are identifying the mainstream media along with special interests as enablers of political business as usual," he adds. "With few exceptions, most reporters don’t have a left- or right-wing bias, but a statist bias."

The third enabler identified in the ad is "War." "Libertarian Randolph Bourne put it succinctly, 'war is the health of the State,'" notes Latham. "And so long as the bipartisan War Party rigs elections, it will continue to feed American lives and resources into the State’s gaping, blood-stained maw."