COLUMBIA--A monthlong partisan spat among Charleston lawmakers ended Tuesday with Republicans and Democrats agreeing to combine the two offices that manage the county's elections.

Charleston's House delegation voted unanimously to override Gov. Mark Sanford's veto of legislation combining the county's Election Commission and Board of Voter Registration.

Democrats who blocked the veto override last month voted alongside Republicans, saying their concerns about the merger were being answered.

The upshot is that the delegation will continue to honor the "gentleman's agreement" that splits the party affiliation of election panel board members almost evenly, a deal that Republicans threatened when the veto override was blocked in March.

"We are engaged in some productive dialogue, Democrats and Republicans, and we'll be able to work out some of the personnel issues and that was our biggest concern," said state Rep. David Mack, D-North Charleston. "We think the concerns of both sides will be met."

State Rep. John Graham Altman III, R-West Ashley, said there was no deal cut to break the impasse, that the two sides just worked through the collateral damage of the override fight.

"The liberation of the election process in Charleston County has begun," Altman said following the vote. "The entire delegation came together and accomplished this reform."

The measure began life in the Senate, where Sen. Arthur Rave-nel, R-Mount Pleasant, introduced the legislation in hopes of clearing up chronic problems and gaffes in elections. Ravenel said having two separate staffs running the election was part of the problem.

The Election Commission, governed by a five-member panel, administers all elections in the county while the Board of Voter Registration, also governed by a five-member panel, does the job its name describes.

The legislation that cleared its last hurdle to becoming law Tuesday creates a single agency, the Board of Elections and Voter Registration, which will be governed by a nine-member panel. The merger will occur after it receives approval from the U.S. Justice Department, which monitors election laws for voting rights violations. Lawmakers don't expect a difficult review from Washington because the system proposed for Charleston is already used in several counties, including Berkeley.

Once implemented, the delegation will nominate members through the governor and choose the chairman. The board will hire its director. Lawmakers say privately that the practice of the boards hiring directors who in turn hire board members as staff will be stopped.

That complex relationship lay at the heart of much of the earlier Democratic opposition. Some Democrats felt loyalty to appointees on the Board of Voter Registration who had been hired as staff in the Voter Registration Office and worried some might find themselves not only off the board, but unemployed as well.

Former voter registration director Mickey Miller bristled at the bill when it was introduced, telling lawmakers it would be wrong to dump state-certified employees and board members.

Delegation leaders did not want to talk about the gentlemen's agreement Tuesday, but quietly acknowledged there would be one. In the past, the majority in the delegation has held a 3-2 edge on the five-member panels. Under that reasoning, five of the nine seats on the new commission would go to the GOP, four to Democrats.

There was a threat that had the veto not been overridden, some Republicans would have moved to oust Democrats from the two existing panels, although others argued it would not have come to that. Altman, who originally made that threat, said simply that there was no need to worry about good employees being fired.

"Our view has always been that competent people don't lose their jobs," Altman said.

That, in some ways, goes to the heart of the issue. Members of the delegation have been frustrated by the apparent bungling of every local election for the past few years. Some of it they attributed to miscommunication between the two boards, and some of it to staffing problems.

Rep. Seth Whipper, D-North Charleston, said that in tough economic times it was a good financial decision to avoid duplication between the two agencies. He said preservation of the gentlemen's agreement, which ensures the minority party a voice, allows people a sense of comfort that elections will be run fairly.

Still, Whipper said the vote to override the governor's veto does not necessarily mean Sanford was wrong to veto it. Sanford vetoed the bill in February on the grounds that it was unconstitutional because it was special legislation that applied only to Charleston.

Republicans remain miffed at Sanford for his veto. Altman said the veto "cost us two months."

"In less than one year, the election process for Charleston County will begin again," Altman said. "I just hope we have time to get ready for it."