Voting Should Be More Like Olive Garden
If they can figure out how to deal with pasta fraud, then surely they can stop voter fraud
If you haven’t heard the big news, Olive Garden is rolling out extraordinary new precautions to crack down on pasta fraud. Namely, passholders of the establishment’s coveted never-ending pasta pass must now additionally present a valid photo I.D. (like a driver’s license) to wait staff to reap their reward.
Those who fail to properly identify themselves, or lack a never-ending pass altogether, must sit in silence and, tragically, make do with limited pasta while their peers gorge themselves on greasy goodness. It sounds like an incredible opportunity to widen your waistline while making your family, friends, colleagues, or partner feel insecure and judgmental about your life choices.
Better yet, thanks to the restaurant’s strict commitment to protecting pasta integrity, online Republicans want to see Olive Garden step in and take over our elections too. After all, if they can figure out how to thwart the unforgivable sin of pasta fraud, then surely they can figure out how to stop the two or three cases of voter fraud that happen in every election.
Of course, this meme is referring to Donald Trump’s failed attempts to pass the SAVE Act — election-rigging legislation poorly disguised as election security enhancements. Namely, under the proposed law, every voter would need to submit federal photo identification alongside their ballot for it to be counted.
It sounds so simple, and that’s where people are too easily fooled. Admittedly, even as a so-called radical-leftist, I don’t really object to this in premise; proving who you say you are is a normal part of life these days, whether you’re buying alcohol or even dining at Olive Garden.
But that’s not what this is.
If we’re going to have a national photo identification system for voting, it has to be free and accessible to everyone — that’s not just my opinion, it’s the law.
Unfortunately, the types of ID people already carry in their purses and wallets won’t work for the purposes of the SAVE Act.
Unlike Olive Garden, which only asks to pair a face with a name, the SAVE Act specifies identification that proves citizenship. For the average person, this leaves only a select few options, which tend to be too expensive and time-consuming to obtain before election day.
A driver’s license, even with Real ID, won’t work on its own.
Instead, voters would have to track down a birth certificate (which will only work if it matches their current name) or spend over $100 and engage in a multi-month waiting process to obtain a passport. The first option is inherently out of the question for most married women, at least for those who’ve taken their husband’s surname. That’s why you might have heard other warnings about how the SAVE Act would disenfranchise tens of millions of women — for all intents and purposes, it’s true.
Likewise, having to pay the government any amount of money to be allowed to vote is considered a poll tax, which is explicitly outlawed by the Voting Rights Act and Twenty-Fourth Amendment.
Charging $100 for an unlimited pasta pass is a questionable business decision, but charging $100 to vote is categorically illegal. Attaching any kind of price tag is illegal and fundamentally anti-democratic.
Moreover, the SAVE Act has nothing to do with security in the first place, as voter fraud is so statistically rare that it has never even come close to influencing the outcome of an election. Even the 2020 election, which Trump refuses to admit he LOST fairly to Joe Biden, Republican attorneys and state legislators still don’t have any proof supporting their insane claims that it was rigged or stolen from him.
The SAVE Act is perhaps better titled ‘SAVE TRUMP’S ASS ACT,’ as it’s nothing more than a desperate bid to rig the midterms by giving the feds the unprecedented power to pick and choose who gets to vote. It’s no coincidence then that the only accepted forms of identification under the proposal would pose an undue burden on women and lower-income households — generally speaking, the demographics with the most reasons to hate this administration.
Plus, if you needed any more proof of just how disingenuous this entire voter ID push is, consider the kinds of people who are trying to sell it.
Strangely, the same voices who have spent the past several decades warning us about the dangers of ‘big government’ and the inefficiencies of its bureaucracies are now pretending that waiting at government offices is a fun and patriotic process. As we all know, conservatives just adore standing in line at the DMV — besides, what spells out f-r-e-e-d-o-m louder than paying taxes to vote and giving Big Brother an expansive list of our personal details? America, baby!
The same people, mind you, who lost their minds over being asked to wear masks during the pandemic.
And let’s face it, the deranged individuals who actually pay for an Olive Garden unlimited pasta pass probably don’t take very kindly to being separated from their breadsticks. I haven’t eaten there in years, but I highly doubt anyone there cherishes the idea of having to prove their identities to eat overpriced frozen pasta.
They might even find themselves asking, ‘Is pasta fraud even real?’
In reality, they’re probably just annoyed — just like the octogenarians I regularly see at the grocery store who have to use photo ID to prove they’re not secretly high schoolers trying to get drunk.
This is the truth behind the SAVE Act, an unnecessary ‘precaution’ explicitly designed to annoy people and prevent them from voting. It won’t do anything to stop already nonexistent fraud, but it will give the Trump administration the ammunition it needs to complete the coup it started on January 6.
If you truly believe our elections should be run like the never-ending pasta pass, then I doubt you’ve ever actually eaten at Olive Garden. The same applies to buying a passport, hunting down a long-forgotten birth certificate, and any other bullshit poll tax Republicans want to force us into paying.
Voting should always be free and accessible, and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on.
Damn, now I’m hungry.