08/29/2026
This cartoon is funny because it is also sadly accurate.
Costco takes the integrity of its membership seriously. Your membership card is tied to you, it includes your photo, and the company has increasingly tightened the way it verifies members at the door.
Why? Because Costco understands something remarkably simple, if membership has value, you protect it by making sure only legitimate members are using it.
Yet when we start talking about elections, suddenly verifying identity becomes controversial.
Voting is infinitely more important than buying a 48-pack of toilet paper. Elections determine who controls our government, who spends our tax dollars, who appoints judges, and who writes the laws the rest of us have to live under.
Democrats repeatedly warn that Donald Trump and Republicans are trying to manipulate elections.
Fine. If you genuinely believe there is a threat to our elections, shouldn't you want the strongest, clearest, most transparent safeguards possible?
Require identification. Maintain accurate voter rolls. Verify citizenship where appropriate. Establish clear deadlines. Maintain a documented chain of custody for ballots. Make the process observable and auditable.
None of that should be partisan.
Democrats argue that some voter identification requirements can create obstacles for eligible citizens, particularly elderly, poor, or disabled voters.
Those concerns can be addressed. Make qualifying identification readily available and free. Give people plenty of time and opportunity to obtain it.
But eliminating verification because verification might inconvenience someone is backwards.
The goal should be extraordinarily simple, make voting easy for every eligible American and extraordinarily difficult for anyone who is not eligible.
Republicans should want that. Democrats should want that. Independents should want that.
If Costco can figure out how to verify who belongs inside its warehouse without democracy collapsing, surely the United States of America can figure out how to verify who is legally entitled to cast a ballot.
Why shouldn't secure identification and fully transparent elections be something both parties can agree on?
