What good does it do to require the House and Senate to meet in public if you can't find out how individual legislators vote? And how can voters hold their legislators accountable without that information?

Those are the questions raised by the campaign Gov. Mark Sanford and his allies are waging to require legislators to take recorded votes on all bills that change state law. Mr. Sanford has complained for years that the Senate takes too few recorded votes — it does nearly everything by unanimous consent — but his barbs were transformed into a fullfledged crusade after the House nearly snuck through a pension increase for legislators this spring without a recorded vote. ...

House leaders complain that requiring a roll call on every vote will squander time and money, because each vote on the body's electronic voting system takes three minutes and, by their calculation, costs $55. That does add up when you consider that the House can easily vote on dozens of bills each day.

But those problems can be addressed...

We'd prefer someone come up with a reasonable way to spell out the difference between consequential and inconsequential votes, but until that happens, requiring a recorded vote on all bills to change state law strikes us as the only way to provide people with the accountability they deserve from the Legislature.

The (Columbia) State