A hand recount of more than 18,000 ballots in the county's closest race has determined that a Seattle police lieutenant will face incumbent Sue Rahr in next month's election for King County sheriff.

Police Lt. Greg Schmidt led King County sheriff's Sgt. Jim Fuda by 68 votes after last month's primary. Rahr easily sailed into the November general election by beating each of the other candidates by more than 130,000 votes.

Upon learning that a recount is mandatory when the vote difference is less than 150 votes, the two men opted for a rarely used alternative.

Schmidt and Fuda agreed on a machine recount of randomly selected precincts in each of the 17 legislative districts.

Last night, county elections officials announced that after counting 18,761 ballots from 160 precincts, Schmidt had retained the lead, with 62 votes.

Final results will be certified at 2 p.m. today during a meeting of the county election-canvassing board, said Brooke Bascom, a spokeswoman for King County Elections.

Neither candidate was available last night for comment.

Under state law, a manual recount of ballots is required if the vote difference is less than one-fourth of 1 percent of the total number of votes cast for both candidates.

In the Sept. 20 primary, Schmidt received 45,443 votes, Fuda 45,375.

Jennifer Sullivan: 206-464-8294 or jensullivan@seattletimes.com