Letter to the Editor,
 

Gracias and kudos to La Prensa for the article on the Fitrakis/Rios gubernatorial ticket [published August 16, 2006 and written by La Prensa reporter Fletcher Word].

Too many media outlets, most of them in fact, are treating this as a two-candidate race. In fact, elsewhere on the La Prensa web site [www.laprensa1.com], I spotted an article that referred to candidates Ted Strickland and Kenneth Blackwell as “the two candidates” for governor for Ohio.
 

Strickland and Blackwell will not debate either Bob Fitrakis or the Libertarian candidate, Bill Peirce, and it didn’t seem to occur to most organizations who offered to sponsor debates to invite those latter two. They go by polls, they say, but often the polls don’t include Fitrakis or Peirce as choices either!
 

The result of this distortion of the race is that voters are inadequately informed about the options they have, because candidates represent different slates of policies from which voters can choose. The perception that choices are limited breeds voter apathy.
 

I hope that from now until election time that La Prensa will continue to take Fitrakis and Peirce and their running mates seriously and afford them equal time with Strickland and Blackwell. I believe La Prensa should consider sponsoring a meet-and-greet or debate featuring Fitrakis and Peirce and their running mates.
 

The Blade said they really wanted a Toledo debate, but totally brushed off my suggestion to invite Peirce and Fitrakis after Strickland and Blackwell said no. Such an event would give Toledoans a look at choices they don't often get to evaluate, and would give Toledo an important role in the election.

Yours truly,
 

Jessica Weinberg

Third-year law student at Ohio Northern University but from Sylvania, Ohio