With all this talk about evidence and proof with regard to all the different suits alleging voter and election fraud, Andrea Widburg has written a very nice primer on how burden of proof issues apply in these cases: The burden of proof should favor Trump in election fraud litigation. I highly recommend it to anyone who needs a refresher on this crucial topic.
Widburg's starting point is this very important Trump tweet:
Biden can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous “80,000,000 votes” were not fraudulently or illegally obtained. When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia & Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he’s got a big unsolvable problem!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2020
Widburg frames her explanation as a metaphor on a game of tennis:
Imagine that the plaintiff and the defendant are on opposite sides of a tennis court. The plaintiff serves first.
With that first serve, the plaintiff has to get his evidence – his proof about the facts he’s alleging -- over the net onto the defendant’s side of the court. If the case requires only a preponderance of evidence, the evidence just needs to clear the net. If the standard is clear and convincing evidence, it needs to go about halfway onto the defendant’s side of the court. And if the plaintiff must prove something beyond a reasonable doubt, evidence must go to the furthest edge of the defendant’s side.
Since these are not criminal cases, we can ignore that last part about "beyond a reasonable doubt."
How about the defendant, the Dems? In terms of Widburg's tennis metaphor, the Dem return just needs to get over the net--but how does that work? This is how:
