Los Angeles Times 11/26/2020

A6 THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2020 LATIMES.COM

THE NATION

ATLANTA — A machine

recount of Georgia’s 5 mil-

lion votes in the presidential

race is underway, just days

after election workers com-

pleted a laborious hand tally

that confirmed President-

elect Joe Biden’s narrow win

in the state.

The recount was re-

quested Saturday by Presi-

dent Trump’s campaign af-

ter certified results showed

him losing the state to Biden

by 12,670 votes, or 0.25%.

Under state law, the losing

candidate can request a re-

count when the margin is

under 0.5%.

State election officials

say that the recount results

may be slightly different

from the original tally, but

that it’s very unlikely it

would change the outcome.

County election workers

across Georgia were allowed

to begin the machine re-

count at 9 a.m. Tuesday and

must finish by the end of the

day next Wednesday.

Some counties only

tested their equipment

Tuesday, with counting be-

ginning Wednesday. With in-

terruptions for the Thanks-

giving holiday expected, the

secretary of state’s office in-

structed counties to publicly

post when they would be

testing so that monitors

from both main political

parties and interested mem-

bers of the public could ob-

serve.

Last Thursday, officials

announced the results of a

hand tally that was done for

an audit and was not consid-

ered an official recount. The

day after Republican Secre-

tary of State Brad Raffens-

perger announced that the

tally had confirmed Biden’s

lead, he certified the election

results.

GOP Gov. Brian Kemp

then certified the state’s

slate of 16 presidential elec-

tors, a group of prominent

Democrats.

Under state rules, an offi-

cial recount must be con-

ducted by high-speed scan-

ners.

Before beginning, elec-

tion workers test the scan-

ners to make sure they’re

counting accurately. To do

so, they create test decks of

100 ballots — 75 marked by

touchscreen voting mach-

ines and 25 marked by hand

— and count them by hand

before scanning them to

make sure the tallies are the

same.

Biden is the first Demo-

cratic presidential candi-

date to win Georgia in 28

years, since Bill Clinton.

“Georgia voters have se-

lected Joe Biden to be their

next president,” Biden cam-

paign attorney Patrick

Moore said in a call with re-

porters Tuesday. “We’re con-

fident that this second re-

count ... will simply reaffirm

Joe Biden’s victory in Geor-

gia.”

Georgia

tallies its

ballots a

3rd time

County workers begin

recount requested by

the Trump campaign.

associated press

HONOLULU — Just as the
COVID-19 pandemic began to take
hold in February, four people set sail
for one of the most remote places on
Earth — a small camp on Kure Atoll,
at the edge of the uninhabited
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
There, more than 1,400 miles
from Honolulu, they lived in isola-
tion for eight months while working
to restore the island’s environment.
Cut off from the rest of the planet,
their world was limited to a patch of
sand halfway between the U.S.
mainland and Asia. With no televi-
sion or internet access, their only in-
formation came from satellite text
messages and occasional emails.
Now they are back, reemerging
into a changed society that might
feel as foreign today as island isola-
tion did in March. They must adjust
to wearing masks, staying indoors
and seeing friends without giving
hugs or hearty handshakes.
“I’ve never seen anything like
this, but I started reading the book
‘The Stand’ by Stephen King, which
is about a disease outbreak, and I
was thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, is
this what it’s going to be like to go
home?’ ” said Charlie Thomas, one
of the four island workers. “All these
... precautions, these things, people
sick everywhere. It was very strange
to think about.”
The group was part of an effort
by the state of Hawaii to maintain
the fragile island ecosystem on
Kure, which is part of the Papa-
hanaumokuakea Marine National
Monument, the nation’s largest
contiguous protected environment.
The public is not allowed to land
anywhere in the Northwestern
Hawaiian Islands.
Kure is the only island in the
northern part of the archipelago
that is managed by the state, with
the rest under the jurisdiction of the
federal government. A former Coast
Guard station, the atoll is home to
seabirds, endangered Hawaiian
monk seals and coral reefs that are
teeming with sea turtles, tiger
sharks and other marine life.
Two field teams go there each
year, one for summer and another

for winter. Their primary job is re-

placing invasive plants with native

species and cleaning up debris such

as fishing nets and plastic that

washes ashore.

Before they leave, team mem-

bers are often asked if they want to

receive bad news while away, said

Cynthia Vanderlip, the supervisor

for the Kure program.

“A few times a day, we upload

and download email so people stay

in touch with their family and

friends. That’s a huge morale boost-

er, and I don’t take it lightly,”

Vanderlip said. “People who are in

remote places ... rely on your

communication.”

Thomas, the youngest member

of the team at 18, grew up in a beach

town in New Zealand and spent

much of her free time with seabirds

and other wildlife. She finished

school a year early to start her first

job as a deckhand for an organiza-

tion dedicated to cleaning up coast-

lines before volunteering for the

summer season on Kure Atoll.

The expedition was her first time

being away from home for so long,

but she was ready to disconnect.

“I was sick of social media, I was

sick of everything that was sort of

going on,” she said. “And I thought,

you know, I am so excited to get rid

of my phone, to lose contact with

everything.... I don’t need to see all

the horrible things that are going on

right now.”

When Thomas left New Zealand

for Hawaii, there were no virus

cases nearby that she can recall. By

the time she left Honolulu for Kure,

the virus was starting to “creep a lit-

tle closer” to the islands.

“We were just seeing stories on

the television and that sort of

thing,” she said. “But, you know,

we’re off. We’re leaving. It wasn’t

really a big concern for us.”

Once on Kure, getting a full pic-

ture of what was happening in the

world was difficult.

“I guess I didn’t really know what

to think because we were getting so

many different answers to ques-

tions that we were asking,” she said.

Thomas is now in a hotel in quar-

antine in Auckland, where she lives

with her parents, sister and a dog

named Benny. She will miss hugs

and “squishing five people on a

bench to have dinner,” she said.

Joining her on the island was

Matthew Butschek II, who said he

felt most alone when he received

news about two deaths.

His mother emailed to tell him

that her brother had died.

Butschek said his uncle was ill be-

fore the pandemic, and he was not

sure if COVID played a role in his

death. He could not grieve with his

family.

Then Butschek, 26, received

word that one of his best friends had

been killed in a car accident.

“I remember reading that, think-

ing it was a joke and then realizing it

wasn’t, so my heart started pound-

ing and I was breathing heavily,” he

said.

The isolation of Kure “felt

strong” at that moment, but he

said he tends to like his space when

emotional.

“I drank a beer for him and just

kind of thought about memories,”

he said, describing sitting in his

bunk house alone after a long day of

fieldwork.

While in quarantine last week,

Butschek looked out the window of

his cabin in Honolulu and saw

school-aged children playing on

rocks and climbing trees — all wear-

ing masks. It reminded him of apoc-

alyptic movies.

“It’s not normal for me. But ev-

eryone is like, ‘Yeah, this is what we

do now. This is how we live,’” he said.

Leading the camp on Kure was

wildlife biologist Naomi Worcester,

43, and her partner, Matthew

Saunter.

Worcester first visited the island

in 2010 and has returned every year

since. She’s a veteran of remote

fieldwork in Alaska, Washington,

Wyoming and the Sierra Nevada.

Working on the atoll means get-

ting information about the world

slowly, and often not at all, Worces-

ter said.

A few weeks ago, she departed

Kure and arrived on Midway Atoll,

where she and the rest of the crew

stayed for several days before flying

back to Honolulu. Midway has lim-

ited internet access and basic cable

television. During a moment alone,

she turned on a TV.

“I think I turned it on during the

middle of the World Series,” she re-

called. “And it’s like some people are

wearing face masks and some peo-

ple aren’t. And there is the thing

about the guy that tested positive in

the middle of the game or some-

thing. I was just like, click click, I

don’t know, this is too much!”

Her focus for the coming months

will be to start arranging the Kure

trip for next summer. She also fears

for the health and safety of her

friends and family.

“If there was anything serious

that happened when I was gone,

they would have told me, but then

again, maybe not,” she said.

She also worries about the pan-

demic’s cost in a larger sense.

“With so much uncertainty and

so many emotions running high

and, you know, our country is di-

vided on so many things ... there is

kind of an underlying fear as far as

what the future could hold and how

people could respond.”

Saunter, 35, has worked on Kure

since 2010, the same year he met and

began dating Worcester. They have

been partners in life and on the is-

land for a decade. In 2012, they be-

gan leading teams at the field camp.

After so many years at the camp,

Saunter said, isolation isn’t much of

a factor for him. He believes the

leadership skills he’s learned in the

wilderness will translate well to life

in the pandemic.

To be successful on Kure, you

have to tackle problems head-on

and control your emotions, he said.

“You know people’s emotions

are getting the better of them, and

it’s kind of at the cost of everybody,

so it seems very irresponsible,” he

said. “If we had taken it more seri-

ously and practiced more precau-

tions, we could have squashed this

thing.”

He remembers being on Kure

when his sister called the outbreak

a “pandemic.”

“I got an email from my sister

and she used the word ‘pandemic,’ ”

he said. “I thought to myself, huh,

maybe we need to look that up, be-

cause what’s the difference between

a pandemic and an epidemic?”

Now “it’s a word that’s in every-

body’s vocabulary.”

SEABIRDS FLYover a field camp on Kure Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in a photo taken by an environmental worker.

Charlie ThomasHawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources

From one isolation into another

After months on remote island, crew reemerges to a pandemic-stricken world

associated press

WASHINGTON — Presi-
dent Trump issued a full
pardon Wednesday to
Michael Flynn, his first na-
tional security advisor, re-
warding a loyalist who
pleaded guilty to lying to the
FBI during the Russia inves-
tigation.
Flynn, a retired three-
star Army general, was the
only White House official
charged by special counsel
Robert S. Mueller III during
the inquiry into Russian
meddling in the 2016 elec-
tion.
Flynn admitted to lying
to federal agents in early 2017
about his conversations
with the Russian ambas-
sador. The scandal forced

Flynn out of the White

House after only 24 days, the

shortest tenure of any U.S.

national security advisor.

He later tried to with-

draw his guilty plea and ac-

cused law enforcement offi-

cials of unfairly targeting

him.

Atty. Gen. William Barr

asked to dismiss the case in

May, but U.S. District Judge

Emmet Sullivan resisted,

stalling Flynn’s push for ex-

oneration and frustrating

his right-wing supporters.

Trump announced the

pardon, which was widely

expected, on Twitter. It

wipes the felony conviction

from Flynn’s record.

“Congratulations to Gen.

Flynn and his wonderful

family,” Trump tweeted. “I

know you will now have a

truly fantastic Thanksgiv-

ing!”

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-

Burbank), who heads the

House Intelligence Commit-

tee, was among those who

condemned the pardon as

unwarranted.

Trump, he said, “has

once again abused the par-

don power to reward

Michael Flynn, who chose

loyalty to Trump over loyalty

to his country.”

Flynn’s fight to clear his

name after initially pleading

guilty made him a hero to

Trump’s allies. During this

year’s presidential cam-

paign, Trump publicly

mused about bringing him

back in a second term.

“He’s gone through hell.

He’s been destroyed, but

he’ll make a comeback,” he

said in July.

Trump chose Flynn as his

national security advisor af-

ter winning the 2016 election,

but the president fired him

less than a month later for ly-

ing to Vice President Mike

Pence and other White

House officials about his

conversations with the Rus-

sian ambassador.

Prosecutors said Flynn

told similar lies to federal

agents in an interview at the

White House four days after

Trump was inaugurated,

and Justice Department of-

ficials feared he could be vul-

nerable to a blackmail at-

tempt by Moscow.

“I had to fire General

Flynn because he lied to the

vice president and the FBI,”

Trump tweeted the day after

Flynn pleaded guilty in De-

cember 2017.

After Flynn replaced his

lawyers and hired attorney

Sidney Powell, his case be-

came a central focus for con-

cerns about improper politi-

cal influence in law enforce-

ment. Since the election,

Powell has trumpeted

Trump’s false claims about

election fraud, although the

campaign recently said she

does not represent the presi-

dent.

In the spring, Barr

abruptly asked the court to

dismiss the case against

Flynn, saying it did not have

proper legal foundation,

alarming former Justice De-

partment officials who saw

no precedent for his deci-

sion.

Sullivan did not grant

Barr’s request, instead ap-

pointing a former federal

judge to conduct a review.

The former judge, John

Gleeson, eviscerated Barr’s

arguments to dismiss the

case, calling them “prepos-

terous.”

It was, Gleeson wrote in a

court filing, “an unconvinc-

ing effort to disguise as legit-

imate a decision to dismiss

that is based solely on the

fact that Flynn is a political

ally of President Trump.”

Trump did not consult

with the Justice Depart-

ment before issuing the par-

don, according to an official

there who spoke on condi-

tion of anonymity.

Barr had hoped the case

would be resolved in court,

with Sullivan agreeing to

drop the charge against

Flynn. However, the official

said, the Justice Depart-

ment did not see anything

inappropriate in how the

president used his pardon

power.

Flynn is the second per-

son convicted in the Russia

investigation to receive

clemency from Trump. In

July, the president com-

muted the prison sentence

for Roger Stone, a longtime

political advisor, who was

convicted of witness tam-

pering and lying to Con-

gress.

Other pardons are pos-

sible before Trump leaves of-

fice. Paul Manafort, his 2016

campaign chairman, was

convicted of multiple finan-

cial crimes and pleaded

guilty to a conspiracy involv-

ing his illegal lobbying for

Ukraine.

Manafort’s business

partner, Richard Gates,

pleaded guilty to making

false statements and one

count of conspiracy.

Trump pardons ex-national security advisor Flynn

President rewards a

loyalist who pleaded

guilty to lying to FBI.

By Chris Megerian