“Have you tried Senator Romney?”

Over my near-decade of experience advocating on Capitol Hill, I’ve observed a few trends that hold true across nearly all legislative efforts. One of the most frustrating is how hard it can be to gain bipartisan support for issues that simply should not be politicized. The best way to address this frustration is a structural solution such as ranked choice voting or the Fair Representation Act. 

Years ago, I was promoting legislation to reform how hate crime data is collected. To find broad support, I sought out Republican members of Congress who supported the last successful reform to federal hate crime law, the bipartisan Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. Looking down the list of its supporters, I found that most had either lost re-election bids in their primaries or simply retired. Closer analysis found that most of the Republicans that supported previous hate crime bills had largely left Congress.

In 2018, Professor Danielle Thomsen wrote, “The absence of moderates from congressional office today is particularly striking from a historical perspective, because just 40 years ago more than half of members of Congress were at the ideological center. The hollowing out of the political center has had a deleterious impact on the legislative process.” Her observation remains true five years later. 

Those willing to work in a bipartisan way are becoming an endangered species on Capitol Hill, which complicates nonpartisan reform efforts. Gaining bipartisan support is the best way to advance legislation, but there are fewer and fewer members willing to consider bills from the other side. As such, every member of Congress with a reputation for working across the aisle is inundated with co-sponsorship requests. 

Senator Romney was a rare member of Congress with a reputation for considering the merits of legislation, regardless of the partisanship of its supporters. Now he too has announced his retirement. 

A large part of his decision to retire was driven by growing extremism in Congress, and his inability to work effectively within that environment. The Atlantic recently published interviews with the Senator in which he said, “A very large portion of my party…really doesn’t believe in the Constitution” a few months after the attempted coup of January 6, 2021. And while Republicans have lost moderates at a greater rate than Democrats in recent years, there is growing concern that bipartisan Democrats in the Senate may soon join Romney in retirement, leaving no one willing to work across the aisle in the upper house. 

While there are various potential explanations for why Congress has become so polarized in recent years, we at FairVote focus on potential solutions. Ranked choice voting can realign electoral incentives by rewarding candidates who are able to reach voters beyond their base, and thus elect more politicians willing to work across the aisle – if for no other reason than their need to face constituents again in another ranked choice election. 

To be clear, ranked choice voting does not promote moderates, nor any other spot on the political spectrum, for that matter. It merely elects politicians who more closely resemble their voters, and nearly three quarters of Americans want members of Congress to compromise in order to find solutions. Americans deserve a legislature that looks like them, which includes individuals across the political spectrum – not just at either end.

The loss of members such as Senator Romney, who are willing to consider ideas outside of their base, makes structural improvements like the Fair Representation Act existentially important. Because a patchwork of local changes cannot effectively reform Congress, it is incumbent on activists to urge politicians to support comprehensive political reform efforts.