IN THE MID-90s, the House and Senate toyed with the idea of abolishing the secretary of state’s office, an excellent idea promoted by the occupant at the time, Jim Miles. The House approved the idea one year, the Senate another, but they never both signed off on it at the same time.

But for that quixotic effort, no other attempt to alter our state constitution’s 1895 directive that voters elect an inordinate number of ministerial officers has mustered the extraordinary two-thirds vote needed to clear either the House or the Senate in modern memory.

Until last week.

Last week, the House passed legislation that would ask voters to amend the constitution next year, to let the governor appoint the superintendent of education and the secretary of state.

We would like to have seen the adjutant general, agriculture commissioner and one of our two elected financial officers added to the list, along with a move to let gubernatorial nominees selecte the candidates for lieutenant governor. Those House members who don’t want voters to even have the chance to consider such changes are doing a disservice to the state and, frankly, demonstrating an appalling lack of trust in the good judgment of the very voters whose judgment they claim to be defending.

Still, even allowing a vote on those two positions is a historic step forward, and a step that reflects well on the difficult political calculation made by House Speaker David Wilkins and his top lieutenants, who worked hard to come up with the right combination of officers that could generate support from two-thirds of their colleagues. Allowing the governor to appoint these two positions should allay fears about such a change, and provide a useful contrast to those offices that still are elected. If governors make wise choices, that will convince even more people of the need for still more changes.

South Carolina voters elect an extraordinary nine separate statewide offices, each tasked with overseeing one little piece of the government. This often results in the executive branch of the government fighting itself, which is neither productive nor efficient. Forcing voters to choose all those officers on top of legislative, congressional and local officials dilutes the amount of time they have to consider each office.

And for what? Generally, so they can pick people whose job is not to make policy but to run a state agency. That hardly makes sense. Neither does restricting our pool of agency directors to those politicians who are willing to raise money and run a political campaign; the result of that is that we rob our state of capable professionals who are much better prepared to be top administrators, but who have no desire to be politicians.

The Senate now gets to decide whether we even allow the possibility. Moreover, the Senate has an opportunity to move our state even closer to professional and efficient management by adding more officers to the list — and senators most certainly should do that. But the Senate was not particularly open to the idea last year, and so any legislation will be difficult to pass. It will be up to President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell, Sen. Tom Moore and other reform proponents to put as much effort into getting this measure through the Senate as their counterparts in the House did.