THROUGHOUT MOST of South Carolina’s history, the recipe for becoming a judge has been simple: Get yourself elected to the Legislature, and then cajole, intimidate or cut deals to get your colleagues to elect you to the bench. Cut more deals to stay there.

The shortcomings of such a system were brought into stark relief on a spring day in 1995, when legislators used a complex series of vote trades to elect the least qualified candidates to the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals while re-electing a Circuit judge and elevating a House member to the bench after the Legislature’s screening committee said they didn’t understand the law and the S.C. Bar declared them unfit.

Just to make sure no one missed the point, legislators followed up two months later by re-electing a family court judge who tried to intimidate a witness into not testifying against his re-election; then they elevated a House member to the Court of Appeals even though the Bar had questioned his qualifications and he was running against one of the best Circuit judges in the state.

Within a year, legislative embarrassment and public outrage coalesced to force through sweeping reforms to the state’s judicial selection system. Henceforward, legislators would have to resign their positions at least a year before they could run for a judgeship. A powerful new screening committee would be able not only to disqualify candidates it deemed incompetent (which wasn’t allowed before) but also to vet those who met minimal qualifications, allowing only the three strongest candidates for each position to run. And legislators and candidates who tried to swap votes and cut deals could face prison time. The result has been a noticeable improvement in the caliber of candidates for and winners in open judicial seats.

But reform rarely goes over well; the system always pushes back.

And last week, the system pushed back with vigor. The House Judiciary Committee voted overwhelmingly to ditch two of those vital reforms, opening wide the door to all candidates who meet minimal qualifications, and letting former legislators run for judgeships the day they resign. Only the reform that is nearly impossible to enforce — the ban on vote-trading — would remain.

Proponents say their intention is to increase the appallingly low number of African-American judges. And some people are sincere in their intention and their belief that this will happen. But make no mistake: That is not the reason this legislation is gaining traction.

This legislation is gaining traction because many legislators yearn for the bad old days, when they could hand-pick their cronies to sit on the bench. And that is precisely what these changes will accomplish.

Oh, it’s possible that a couple of additional black judges will be elected; indeed, if lawmakers are smart (or if they care about what voters think about their integrity), they will likely make a point of quickly putting one or two more black legislators on the bench, to maintain the facade that this change was about reform.

It is a moral outrage that only 7 percent of our judges are African-American. We need to demand that legislators of both races and both parties work to recruit more and better black candidates, and then vote for them. We do not need to repeal vital reform measures. We do not need to return to the days when having the right political connections was the paramount prerequisite for becoming a judge.