When I was 20 years old, I went to my hometown Olive Garden with one goal in mind: For less than $10, I would attempt to eat so much bottomless pasta in their so-called Never-Ending Pasta deal that either the staff would be forced to stop me and my idiot friends from putting the franchise into the red, or I would die trying. In either scenario, I planned to get a serious bang for my buck. No one asked to see my ID.
I ate a ton of linguine alfredo (probably four bowls — not heroic and definitely not financially devastating to Olive Garden), shamefully tapped the mat, and went back to my friends’ place to smoke too much weed. The next morning, on the four hour drive back to my college town, I started feeling a burning, cramping pain in my abdomen. By that evening, I was curled up in pain and could barely walk. I drove myself to the emergency room, confessed my sins, and learned I had a handful of gallstones that the buckets of creamy, fatty, carby pasta had aggravated into an attack.
Should I have been carded before carrying out such a reckless crime against my own wellbeing? Maybe. But this week, right-wing groups and Republicans have started repeating a lie that Olive Garden’s promotional deals are more secure than the country’s elections.
I’m telling this humbling story because this morning, a clip of Republican Congressman Steve Scalise went viral where he claimed Olive Garden is more secure than the voting system of the United States of America. On a CNBC Squawk Box segment, the House Majority Leader said, “For God’s sake, you can’t get pasta at Olive Garden without a picture ID! Why not be able to show a picture ID to vote?” He was speaking in support of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) Act, which conservatives have been attempting to pass since 2024 and would require voters to show specific kinds of government-issued identification at the polls.
A lot of people, myself included, have been dunking on Scalise’s comment. Of course you don’t have to show ID to eat pasta at Olive Garden under normal circumstances, unless you’re doing something especially 18+ to the pasta, at which point I assume they’d just throw you out anyway. Right? But this line — the polls are less secure than an Olive Garden — is something Scalise is repeating from many Republican leaders who want to see the SAVE Act pass. Mike Lee, Eli Crane, Todd Rokita and RNC-affiliated groups have repeated this line on social media over and over in the last few days. It’s a false equivalence, of course, but nowadays, unlike in my naive youth, you do actually have to show ID to access Never-Ending-Pasta-land.
They’re all talking about it because Olive Garden brought back Never-Ending Pasta on July 16, and this time around, it requires you to show an ID that matches your “pasta pass,” I assume to prevent people from trying to never-endingly feed a big table with one deal. “The Never-Ending Pasta Pass is only for use by the Passholder whose name is printed on the Pass,” Olive Garden wrote on X, in response to someone asking if they could use it for their family. “Passes are personalized and non-transferable. Passholders must present a valid photo I.D. along with the Pass at the time of ordering.”
No. The Never-Ending Pasta Pass is only for use by the Passholder whose name is printed on the Pass. Passes are personalized and non-transferable. Passholders must present a valid photo I.D. along with the Pass at the time of ordering.
— Olive Garden (@olivegarden) July 16, 2026
404 Media’s Matthew Gault went directly to the source: an Olive Garden on his lunch break today. He said he had to speak to three employees, who he described to me as “confused and frightened,” before getting an answer about Olive Garden’s pass system. “The [pasta pass] card doesn’t come back until the end of August, they have no idea how it’s gonna work,” he said.
I reached out to Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden, to see if they could provide more clarity or comment on the situation. I’ll update if I hear back.
Voting rights experts say the SAVE Act would severely and unnecessarily restrict everyone’s voting rights, not just people who don’t hold ID. “Every American, including people who have been registered for decades, would need to appear in person at an election office with qualifying documents,” nonpartisan voting rights nonprofit Vote.org says in a FAQ about the act. “Online voter registration, which 42 states currently rely on, would be upended or eliminated. Mail registration would end entirely. Voter registration drives would become functionally ineffective, since they depend on reaching people at events and public spaces where no one carries a passport or birth certificate.”
Simply having a driver’s license or other form of photo ID wouldn’t be enough. The SAVE Act requires a valid U.S. passport or passport card, a certified birth certificate paired with a photo ID, a naturalization certificate, or a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, Vote.org explains. If you have a different name today than what’s on your documents — for example, if you got married and changed your last name — you could also have to show your marriage certificate or other documentation.
Voting rights advocates agree that election fraud is not currently a widespread concern. But ahead of the midterms, the Trump administration has been rekindling false conspiracies about election fraud, fake ballots, and foreign interference.
Some Republicans are pushing back on the SAVE Act, too. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski wrote in an op-ed that the act would severely chill voting rights in Alaska because of its vast geography and limited election infrastructure. Alaska is a stark example, but this would be the case in much of the rest of the country, too.
We can discuss the chilling effects of Olive Garden’s vague and potentially confusing identity verification requirements another day. At least it’s probably more secure and less privacy-invasive than a lot of the age verification laws in place in most of the country today.
