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Weekend Edition - NOV. 14-15,2020 | $2.00 | GAINESVILLE, GEORGIA | gainesvilletimes.com
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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
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