Last week, President Trump gave a speech at the White House in which he made exaggerated claims about election vulnerabilities to pressure the Senate to push through a stalled voting restriction bill that would impose strict new voter identification requirements nationwide.
That same week, the pasta behemoth Olive Garden brought back its popular Never-Ending Pasta Pass, and informed customers that a photo ID would be needed to use it.
Thanks to a social media post — what else? — these two separate, seemingly unrelated events became intertwined, as Republicans 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 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.
Olive Garden’s passes allow the 10,000 Americans lucky enough to purchase one to enjoy 13 weeks of unlimited pasta for 100 bucks. Given those economics, a social media user asked the chain whether families could share a pasta pass. The answer was no; passes could be used only by the individuals who bought them.
“Passholders must present a valid photo I.D. along with the Pass at the time of ordering,” Olive Garden wrote on social media.
And just like that, Republicans had their latest and perhaps most appetizing talking point in their campaign to shame Democrats for opposing strict new measures that would require Americans to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote and limited forms of identification at the polls.
After Congress returned to session on Monday, Olive Garden and its endless pasta deal were invoked seven times in what is a normally dry House committee hearing and once on the Senate floor.
“We are protecting our breadsticks more than our ballots,” said Representative Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican who is the chairman of the Administration Committee, which has jurisdiction over election legislation, and the author of a strict voter ID bill. As it happens, he also worked at the Janesville, Wis., Olive Garden during his senior year in high school.
The comparison is highly misleading. Three dozen states require voters to show identification to vote in person, including 23 that require a photo ID, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The remaining 14 states and Washington, D.C., use other methods to verify voters’ identities, such as requiring a signature on an affidavit or personal information to be provided at the polls.
The Republican bill, known as the SAVE America Act, would establish strict federal limits around what forms of photo identification could be used to verify a voter’s identity at every polling place in the country. It also would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. Only five states issue photo identification that indicates American citizenship, meaning that in most places, individuals would have to produce a passport or a birth certificate — documents that studies have shown a substantial number of Americans do not have readily at hand — along with their photo ID to be eligible to vote at all under the bill.
Olive Garden would be hard-pressed to sell its bottomless pasta bowl were such documentation required.
Democrats have scoffed, arguing that Republicans are revealing how little they value Americans’ constitutional right to vote by equating it to a promotional card available to customers with cash to spare and the fortune to log onto a restaurant’s website at the right time.
“Voting is not pasta,” said Representative Teresa Leger Fernández, Democrat of New Mexico.
Still, the pasta discourse has even spread to the White House, where a spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, brought it up in a Newsmax interview the morning after Mr. Trump’s speech.
“I thought, that’s weird,” Ms. Jackson said. “Olive Garden takes pasta pass security more serious than Democrats are taking election security.”
The comparison then simmered on social media all weekend before Republican lawmakers brought it to the halls of the Capitol (which, incidentally, is six miles from the nearest Olive Garden).
Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina and the chairwoman of the Rules Committee, invoked the restaurant at the start of a hearing on Monday about the bills that House G.O.P. leaders are trying to bring to the floor this week.
“Heck,” Ms. Foxx said. “You even need to present a photo ID to utilize the Olive Garden Never-Ending Pasta Pass.”
The restaurant’s promotion also made its way to the Senate floor, where Senator Bernie Moreno, Republican of Ohio and a close Trump ally, brought it up to hammer Democrats for blocking the SAVE America Act.
Democrats have denounced Republicans’ proposed legislation as overly burdensome, arguing that the requirements would make it more difficult for eligible Americans to vote.
They have also dismissed the Olive Garden comparison as overly simplistic, especially given that most Americans can still purchase a standard meal there without showing any identification at all.
“Voting is a constitutional right,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts. “It is not a lunch special. You have a constitutional right to vote; you don’t have a constitutional right to a breadstick or a bowl of pasta.”
A representative for Olive Garden did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post How the G.O.P. Turned Olive Garden Into a Voter ID Talking Point appeared first on New York Times.
