Finally calling the voting roll

The Senate's approval of a roll-call voting bill recognizes that the citizens of South Carolina have a right to know, by law, how their legislators vote. It's a simple, straightforward acknowledgement of the accountability required of a popularly elected representative body.

Before the bill passed on Thursday, there was debate over the primacy of Senate rules over a statutory requirement for votes to be recorded.

The former view suggests that voting transparency should be the prerogative of the Senate. The decision to mandate recorded voting by statute acknowledges the primacy of the electorate, when votes are taken in the upper chamber.

"My constituents have a right to know how I vote," Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort tells us. "It's got to be a substantive right. It cannot depend on whether the Senate by its rules decides whether the public has a right to know."

The Senate vote follows a similar action in the House to require recorded votes on legislative matters. It is the successful conclusion of a reform measure undertaken two years ago by then-Rep. Nikki Haley.

On Thursday, now-Gov. Haley hailed the roll-call votes as "a huge step forward."

"We have long said rules protect legislators; laws protect the people. By passing this bill, the House and Senate clarify that we believe the people, not elected officials, are in charge," she said.

Now that this measure has finally passed, it's time for the Senate to take up some of the important restructuring reforms already adopted by the House.

Those include bills to create an executive Department of Administration and to merge the Corrections and Parole departments.

Both would provide greater public accountability as well as cost savings to the state. The Department of Administration would take over many of the functions of the state Budget and Control Board, which are executive in nature.

Another important House-passed measure would allow the voters to decide whether general-election candidates for governor and lieutenant governor should run on a party ticket, as candidates for president and vice president do at the national level.

Voters would also get the opportunity to decide in a statewide referendum whether the superintendent of education should be appointed by the governor. Doing so would broaden the chief executive's scope to a major policy area where much of the state's revenue is spent.

While the Senate has approved recorded voting and, earlier, a fix for the financially strapped Medicaid system, it also spent two weeks debating whether raffles should be legalized.

Time grows short to take care of really important measures this year, and the Senate should make the most of it.