During his latest appearance on CNBC, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise rolled out a new pitch for voter ID laws.
“For God’s sake,” the Louisiana Republican said Tuesday. “You can’t go get pasta at Olive Garden without a picture ID.”
A couple of hours later, at a Capitol Hill press conference, Scalise again talked about needing a photo ID to get pasta at Olive Garden, but he was hardly alone. There seemed to be a never-ending bowl of GOP lawmakers and White House officials pitching the same line around the same time, each drawing a connection between one of the party’s favorite voting restrictions and the casual dining chain.
As it turns out, there’s a reason for this — and it’s not a good one.
Olive Garden last week brought back its Never-Ending Pasta Pass, but to avoid customers abusing the promotion, customers who pay the $100 for the pass were told they would need to show a photo ID to take advantage of it. As The New York Times reported, Republicans — especially those who have championed President Donald Trump’s voter suppression package, which the White House has labeled the SAVE America Act — soon after “spun up a buzzy but misleading talking point claiming that Olive Garden polices its bottomless pasta deal more tightly than the United States does its elections.”
The Times’ article added:
The claim misrepresents both voter ID laws and the multibillion-dollar casual dining chain’s rules surrounding unlimited breadsticks and limitless spaghetti. But it has nevertheless circulated wildly online, at the Capitol and at the White House, in the latest example of a corroded political discourse that often trivializes the weightiest topics, like comparing voting rights to fettuccine.
The list of problems with the comparison is not short, but let’s note something important at the outset: Voting rights are foundational in a functional democracy, linguine purchases are not. If Republicans can’t tell the difference between casting a ballot and a pasta subscription service, this debate isn’t going to be especially constructive.
There are substantive problems related to the underlying proposal: The GOP’s antivoting legislation would do far more than just mandate voter ID policies nationwide. What’s more, the Republican bill does not simply require a photo ID. It also mandates that voters demonstrate proof of citizenship, a standard that is unnecessary to enjoy Olive Garden’s pasta selection.
For that matter, the point of the restaurant chain’s policy is to avoid multiple people from exploiting a promotional offer by claiming to be someone they are not. In contrast, instances in which Americans try to impersonate other people when voting — the problem that voter ID laws are ostensibly created to address — is ridiculously rare. It is a problem that, for all intents and purposes, does not exist.
I don’t doubt Republicans will soon move on from this latest rhetorical flourish, to some other way to fill in the blank in the “if Americans have to show ID to _____, then they should have to show ID to vote” construction.
But the question for GOP officials and candidates remains the same: If voter impersonation is effectively unheard of, why try to fix a problem that doesn’t exist with new and unnecessary restrictions?
The post Why Republican advocates of voter ID laws are suddenly fixated on Olive Garden appeared first on MS NOW.
