Voters have decided Republican Michael P. Schware will retain his seat for a 4-year term serving as the District 5 representative on the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners.

According to unofficial Lehigh County Voter Registration results, Dougherty received 5,238 votes, 51 percent of the total 10,361 votes cast.

Schware was appointed to the District 5 Seat which was vacated with the election of Glenn Eckhart as county controller.

Native born and a life-long resident of Allentown, Schware has been a certified public accountant for more than 18 years and owns a tax and accounting service in Allentown. During the mid-1990s, while employed with the firm of Concannon, Gallagher, Miller and Co., P.C., he was part of the team assigned to perform Lehigh County's annual audit.

He has a long record of public service which began in the 1980s when he enlisted in the Army and served on a Special Forces A-Team (Green Berets.) That commitment to community has continued post-discharge. He has been a member of the Allentown Planning Commission, 1996-2002; the Allentown Preservation League, a non-profit dedicated to the preservation of the city's historic architecture, 1994-1999 and 2003-2008, and the Wildlands Conservancy's "Drive-Thru Arboretum" project, which was responsible for the landscaping at the Lehigh Street and Interstate 78 interchange, 1996.

Schware is a 1991 graduate of Penn State where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting. He and his wife have two children.