About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 14, 2020)
1 Save up to $186 COUPONS INSIDE Lake Lanier Fishing Report: Bass and stripers both biting well from the banks, sports, 12B eh t ettncs Weekend Edition - NOV. 14-15,2020 | $2.00 | GAINESVILLE, GEORGIA | gainesvilletimes.com First-time bodybuilder from Flowery Branch shares her journey to the stage. LIFE, 8B l 'JM Honestly Local Hall continues recount Photos by SCOTT ROGERS I The Times Hall County Elections officials recount absentee ballots Friday, Nov. 13, inside the Elections Office at the Hall County Government Center as part of the state’s hand recount in the presidential race. Hand tally of presidential race to go through weekend BY MEGAN REED mreed@gainesvilletimes.com Hall County began its hand recount of the presidential race Friday morning, with 91,035 ballots in the county due to be sorted and counted by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Wednesday announced a statewide audit of presidential election results that he said will trigger a full hand recount. All 159 of Georgia’s counties are participating. Several news outlets called the state for Joe Biden on Friday, but the Associated Press has not called Georgia due to the recount. The batches of ballots begin in sealed boxes, which are taken to count teams of one Republican and one Democrat. Ballots are divided into piles for each candidate, and workers then count the piles by hand. Machines are not involved in the process. Hall began the hand recount Friday morning, starting with the absentee by mail ballots cast in the county. “We’re separating the votes for presi dent, and we’re putting them in the Trump stack, the Biden stack and the Jorgensen stack,” Craig Lutz, a county elections board member, said Friday afternoon. “You’ll see a couple other stacks for overvote, which means they voted for two people or more on the presidential ballot, and under vote meant they didn’t vote for president.” Another stack was for ballots that had to be duplicated because they were torn, while a final stack was for ballots that needed to be adjudicated, Lutz said. Lutz said the county expected to be at least halfway done sorting the absentee by mail ballots Friday. On Friday, monitors representing both major parties, as well as elections board members and elections office staff, were walking through the counting area, check ing in on the tables and observing the pro cess. The Carter Center, a nonprofit founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, also had a monitor in the room Friday. The Center was accredited by the Georgia Sec retary of State’s Office to monitor the audit, according to a statement from the Center. Members of the public are allowed to observe the process from a designated area, with the counting done behind a glass wall in the Hall County Government Cen ter. Monitors are allowed to go in the room to see the sorting up-close. The process will continue through the weekend. Lori Wurtz, Hall County’s elec tions director, said teams were expected to count from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, although if teams are in the middle of a batch dur ing the break, they will continue working. Although a state rule book the county had been reviewing stated that recount teams would have three people, in a meeting with the state the guidance was adjusted, allow ing for two people on a team and monitors observing, Wurtz said. Ballots are batched in groups of 25 or 50. ■ Please see BALLOT, 4A Riverside sends cadets home after virus cases BY KELSEY P0D0 kpodo@gainesvilletimes.com A COVID-19 outbreak on campus has prompted Riverside Military Academy, a Gainesville college-preparatory boarding school, to send cadets home early and have them complete the last 10 days of the semester and final exams remotely. “It’s absolutely COVID-19 related,” Britt Daniel, Riverside’s executive vice president said. “We had a very good isolation plan to accommodate a certain amount of cadets who needed to isolate because of the heightened contact tracing requirements in place. Now we have outstripped our capacity.” When a cadet tests positive for COVID-19, Daniel said they’re sent to their own room in a separate section of the barracks to isolate for 10 days. He said those who have been in close ■ Please see RIVERSIDE, 7A $330K in drugs seized at traffic stop BY NICK WATSON nwatson@gainesvilletimes.com Two men are behind bars on heroin and methamphetamine trafficking charges after officers seized roughly $330,000 of the drugs in an Oakwood traffic stop Thursday, Nov. 12, according to authorities. Miguel Angel Guzman- Abarca, 30, of Chicago and Miguel Angel Cadena- Pacheco, 38, of Gainesville, are charged with trafficking heroin and meth in connec tion to the stop, authorities said. Gainesville/Hall County Multi-Agency Narcotics Squad agents responded to a traffic stop around 10:30 p.m. Thursday at the intersection of Poplar Springs Fork and Bolding Road, according to authorities. During the traffic stop, officers found roughly 1,300 grams of meth, nearly 700 grams of heroin and $1,500 cash, according to Hall County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Derreck Booth. Booth said he did not know what led to the traffic stop. Both Guzman-Abarca and Cadena- Pacheco were in the vehicle at the time of the stop. The two were booked into the Hall County Jail, where they remain with no bond. The case is still under investigation. DEATHS 2B Terry Allen, 63 Arthur Anglin Ted Arnold, 79 Tonawanda Carter, 82 Nellie Dyer, 85 Douglas Elrod, 80 William Fretwell, 76 Mary Gooch, 88 Keith Grogan Robert Hackney, 96 Helen Harrison, 85 Janie Jackson, 61 Brooks LaGrua, 81 Jasmine Luke,19 Scott Menard, 41 Bonnie Morgan, 79 Janet Nalley, 68 Ronald Noell, 74 John Osborn, 87 Sadie Randolph, 99 John Richey, 84 Sarah Roehm, 87 Susie Selman, 76 Bonnie Shirley, 84 Ruth Smith,100 Charles Standridge, 78 Louise Vandiver, 92 Ashli Vazquez, 7 William Wallace, 86 Wansley Watson, 92 Ali Zoughi 40901 06825 9 more voices, more victories. Now collaborating with Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University Northeast Georgia Medical Center
