Mike McGinn currently leads Joe Mallahan in the Seattle mayor's race by 462 votes. That's 49.77 percent to 49.33 percent out of 104,014 votes counted—a margin of 0.44 percent of the total vote so far. As I reported yesterday, there are about 100,000 to 110,000 votes in Seattle remaining to be counted.

So how close will the final vote have to be to trigger an automatic recount? According to King County Elections, a machine recount is required if the difference between the top two candidates is less than 2,000 AND less than 1/2 of one percent of the total votes cast for both candidates. The current margin between the two candidates would trigger a machine recount, because it meets both criteria. A manual recount, on the other hand, only kicks in when the margin between the top two candidates is less than 150 votes and less than 1/4 of one percent, so the current margin wouldn't trigger a manual recount.

King County will release the results of the next batch of ballots this afternoon at 4:30.