If Voice had endorsed Barack Obama just prior to the election, I would still be writing this.

I would be asking, just where do you get off comporting yourself as a site dedicated to free speech and open dialogue, and then casting the whole weight of your site to one side or the other?

Doesn't that squelch free speech and open dialogue.  Doesn't that slant the playing field? 

You are hosting a blog where the de facto purpose is for people from both sides to come and exchange ideas, debate, or simply through s*** at each other in an unbiased environment.  When you batch-email all the members that you are squarely on one side or another, you defeat your greatest strength.

We are all aware that many at Voice have assumed identities and post here to varying extents.  Some post very occasionally and non-politically, others function as "super-members" toting strong electoral opinions.  One crosses these "super-members" at their own peril.

And so it goes with June.  If I we not on vacation the last three weeks, I would surely be in the Phantom Zone along with her.  I never saw what June wrote, but I can only assume that she named names.  I don't need to repeat that action, but of course that is no safeguard that I will not be outcast shortly after hitting the "publish" button.

I don't care.  The election is over, and at this point my primary use for the site is entertainment.  It is questionable if the reams of commentary I have written over the last two and a half years have had even the minutest impact on anyone's opinion, other that to firmly entrench the opposition. 

So I will not miss the largely fruitless debates, but I will miss the potential that I thought this site once had.  That is why I ask the entity that is VoiceofArizona.com, who felt compelled to endorse McCain/Palin (was that an unanimous consensus of the Voice staff?), to reconsider their actions.

Retract your endorsement.  The retraction doesn't matter politically of course, but it matters because it is the right thing to do and reestablishes a measure of credibility.  You should not be endorsing any candidate.  What is good for the New York Times editorial page is not good for you when trying to attract members of all persuasions.  Let your members do the opinions, and if you really need to speak your mind on an individual basis, go get an avatar like the rest of us.  Or bring back the radio show, where at least the partisans talking on behalf of Voice were people with names attached to their bloviations, not organizations of indeterminate size.

And after you have retracted your inappropriate endorsement, un-ban June.  She deserves credit for having the guts to point the mistake out to you first.