After the initial vote on December 4, it's been almost three weeks as election officials counted first preferences and calculated the internal distribution of preferences, but at long last, the election is over.

Griffith's new council will have a number of new faces, with half the incoming council being new to the job. New faces will include Jenny Ellis, Laurie Testoni, Shari Blumer, Chris Sutton, Melissa Marin and Manjit Lally while returning candidates include Glen Andreazza, Anne Napoli, Christine Stead, Dino Zappacosta and Simon Croce.

There were 22 counts, attributed to the record-high number of informal votes this election. Griffith ended with a 15 per cent informal vote rate, an impressive amount higher than the Australian average of around 5 per cent.

Some attributed the high informal rate to confusion surrounding the 'above the line' campaign and how to vote. The above-the-line campaign also wasn't as successful as those pushing it might have hoped, only securing seats for three of the twelve people aligned with it.

YOUR NEW COUNCIL:

Candidates marked with an asterix are those who were elected without reaching the quota of votes required, after 22 counts.

Only two of the previous councillors running were not elected to return, those being Deb Longhurst and Rina Mercuri.

The new council will meet for the first time on January 25, where they will elect the new deputy mayor and begin to look to the next three years.

Griffith's referendum results have also now officially been declared, passing a motion to reduce the number of councillors to nine but not passing the motion to change the method of electing the mayor.

Should councillors step down in the next few years, they will not be replaced until the total number is less than nine.

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