LAST YEAR, a reform-minded lawmaker in Virginia introduced a bill to require that all legislation be subject to an on-the-record vote, up or down, that would record each legislator’s position. The bill died on an unrecorded voice vote.

That’s a small but telling example of the contempt for accountability in Richmond, where a wave of ethics reforms following the disgrace and downfall of former governor Robert F. McDonnell did little to enhance legislative transparency. Having been in business since 1619, the General Assembly prides itself on being the oldest continuous lawmaking body in the New World. You’d think it had learned a thing or two over four centuries about what it owes to its constituents. Apparently not.

In 2015, when a nonpartisan, volunteer group called Transparency Virginia surveyed how the sausage is made in Virginia’s legislature, it found that most legislation in the House of Delegates died on unrecorded voice votes. By killing legislation in that manner, lawmakers avoid awkward and embarrassing votes that might come back to haunt them. Better to leave no fingerprints, they reckon, and keep would-be rivals — and constituents — in the dark.

In all, the group found, the Republican-led House squashed about three-quarters of all bills introduced without recording how individual legislators cast their votes. (The state Senate operates according to more transparent rules, generally requiring that individual votes be recorded.)

Among the measures that died in the House in 2015 with no recorded votes, in committees and subcommittees, were ones to prohibit the personal use of campaign contributions; ban discrimination on the basis of gender; create a nonpartisan redistricting commission; tax e-cigarettes and use the proceeds for early-childhood education; allow seniors over the age of 75 to go to the head of voting lines; forbid health-care providers from attempting to change the sexual orientation of minors; and require that those professionally obligated to report child sexual abuse (such as psychologists) be trained in such reporting.

Of some 825 bills that died in committee or subcommittee (out of 1,892 that were introduced that year), 513 died with no recorded vote, and an additional 117 were killed with no vote at all. In just a quarter of all instances did members of the House have their votes recorded when they defeated a piece of legislation. Often, the only officially recorded outcome was “subcommittee recommends laying on the table by voice vote.”

Last week, a House subcommittee, on an unrecorded voice vote, killed a so-called bathroom bill, modeled on North Carolina’s, to bar transgender individuals from using restrooms in some public facilities that don’t correspond to their sex at birth. The bill, which legitimizes bigotry, deserved to die; the public deserved to know how its elected representatives cast their votes on it.

Its sponsor, Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William), is among the most intolerant lawmakers in Richmond, but he was right to blast his colleagues for cowardice. “You campaign one way and come down here and kill things silently,” he said. “They don’t even want to defend their oath. That’s disgusting.”