Andreatta: How to rig an election - Ocean's Eleven-style
What would it take to steal a presidential election, as Donald Trump is implying is under way?
Considering that every serious report on the subject has debunked the prospect as impossible, likening election system security to that of a Las Vegas casino, let's channel the modern Ocean's Eleven.
To steal an election, you're looking at a Boesky, a Jim Brown, a Miss Daisy, two Jethros and a Leon Spinks, not to mention the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever pulling off a combination of cons at every local elections board in the country.
That's a team of at least 15,715 people — five for each of the 3,143 local boards — excluding the Leon Spinks and Ella Fitzgerald. More on them later.
"To rig a national election you'd have to get into every single board of elections and …" said Monroe County Democratic Elections Commissioner Tom Ferrarese before trailing off. "I don't know how you'd rig an election."
First, the Boesky. That's a reference to Ivan Boesky, a former stock trader infamous for his role in a Wall Street insider trading scandal in the 1980s. A Boesky is basically a con with insider information.
The most obvious choice for a Boesky would be an elections commissioner who might be able to, for instance, discard ballots that were cast for Trump.
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Something like that happened in 2007 and in 2009 in Cudahy, California, where three officials rigged local elections by sifting through paper absentee ballots and keeping only those for their candidate.
Discarding ballots in New York is nearly impossible, according to elections commissioners, because the voting machines here record votes on three separate platforms — a ticker tape and two disks, one red and the other blue. The colors are purely coincidental.
State law requires 3 percent of all machines to be audited by four elections workers, two Republicans and two Democrats who are looking over the others' shoulder, who check the blue disk against the red disk and the ticker tape for discrepancies.
"We've never been a vote off in all those audits," said David Van Varick, the Republican Monroe County Board of Elections Commissioner.
"I don't think there is a way," Van Varick said of rigging an election. "I firmly believe it's not possible here."
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Even if you had a Boesky who could discard Trump votes, you'd still need a Jim Brown. That's a reference to the football legend and is characterized by a physical confrontation that, in this case, would divert the attention of above-board election observers.
That requires an observer to pick a fight with at least one other observer so the Boesky commissioner could pull off his job of discarding Trump votes.
In Monroe County, the auditing process takes place in a windowless brick room with no Internet access, according to commissioners. The machines are guarded by a sheriff's deputy until the election is certified.
The deputy would be the logical choice for Miss Daisy, who's the getaway driver. It would be Miss Daisy's duty to break up the Jim Brown and book the combatants.
After the melee, Miss Daisy would have to be replaced by at least two more deputies tasked with keeping the peace. These are the Jethros, defined as laborers who protect Miss Daisy.
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Then you'd need a Leon Spinks. That's something unexpected, like the real Leon Spinks upsetting Muhammad Ali in a 15-round split decision in 1978. In Ocean's Eleven, the Leon Spinks was a temporary power failure that caused mass chaos.
What could cause such pandemonium on Election Day? War is an option.
Imagine President Obama threatening to nuke Russia for all that computer hacking just as the votes were being counted. That would toss CNN's John King off his big map and throw America into anarchy just long enough to give the teams of Boeskys, Jim Browns and Miss Daisys acting in concert around the country time to hand the edge to Hillary Clinton.
You'd still need the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever, though. There are different theories as to what Ocean's Eleven screenwriter Ted Griffin meant by "Ella Fitzgerald," but both apply.
One is that Ella Fitzgerald had a voice so powerful it could shatter crystal. Thus, the casino burglars needed a device so formidable as to knock out electricity to Las Vegas.
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The other is a play on an old Memorex cassette ad that depicts a recording of Ella Fitzgerald's voice shattering a glass with a voiceover asking: "Is it live, or is it Memorex?" In the film, the burglars loop a tape of the casino vault over the security system, leaving the manager unable to ascertain whether the footage he's watching is real.
In either case, the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever would be Trump screaming over and over: "The election is rigged! The election is rigged! The election is rigged!"
That's all it would take to steal the presidential election.
David Andreatta is a Democrat and Chronicle columnist. He can be reached at dandreatta@gannett.com.