The party bosses, the sister-in-law also noticed, were running a lot more candidates this year to fill county committee seats, of which there are more than 2,700.

“I have no doubt that if one name was used without permission there are others who don’t know they are on the ballot as well,” the sister-in-law told her.

To me this sounded like a leap, a lefty conspiracy theory. But I owed my friend a polite response.

“Jillian, this is very interesting though I don’t quite get it,” I wrote. If party leaders are putting people on the ballot without their knowledge, “What do they expect these people to do when they find out?”

What they would do, it turns out, was yell at the reporter who told them.

But that came later. First I did a little research and found out that this kind of thing had happened before in New York City, where dirty tricks and politics go back a very long way. It wasn’t so far-fetched.

I needed to call candidates. But the party machine had nominated more than 1,300 of them, most presumably legitimate. Where to begin? I tried to think like a corrupt party hack. Scammers prey on the elderly. Call older candidates first.