Jones confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that the 16 vote gap between her and sitting councillor Pauline Cotter was reduced to just eight votes.
Said Jones: "Congratulations to Pauline Cotter who has continued in her council role without missing a beat despite this process stretching out over several weeks.
"Of course I am disappointed to have missed out by 8 votes as I was excited at the possibility of being part of a bold and visionary team of city councillors, achieving great things over the next three years for the residents and visitors of our wonderful city.
"The recount was clearly justified as the results have changed, and the issue relating to special votes appears to have been key to that. It was important to be confident in the Innes result which we now can be.
"Thank you to my family, friends and colleagues who have been so supportive over the last few weeks. It is now time to get on with life and work knowing I did all I could to ensure a correct result was sought and achieved."
Cotter will now continue in her position as deputy mayor.
Jones' application for the recount was approved by district court judge K D Kelly last week. Jones said at the time the cost of going through the courts for a recount "can be considerable". A $750 deposit was required to undertake the recount.
On Tuesday, Jones said she had a scrutineer at the recount but was not present when it was undertaken.
"There were three stages to the recount. Firstly, images of all informal and blank votes were reviewed. This led to no change and there was no need to review the physical copies.
"Secondly, the votes were all counted by the same process as for the election. All ballots had been scanned in and the software flags issues (for example where there the top of a tick crosses into another box or there is a mark from a heavy pen used on the other side of the paper). Ballots where issues are identified are then reviewed by two people. If they disagree there is then a third review undertaken which decides how the vote is treated. There were a small number of ballots that were not able to be scanned and were checked manually also by two people. The result was tabulated and it was the same as the final declaration.
"Thirdly, special vote declarations were reviewed. The Judge agreed at the start that where the declaration had no signature of the witness but simply a Council stamp then it should be disallowed. The CCC electoral officer then divided the special vote declarations into two piles – those with signatures and those without signatures. These were checked by the Judge and scrutineers. Having done that, 34 votes were disallowed as the special vote declarations were not witnessed.
"Those votes were removed from the count (numbers were put into an excel spreadsheet – again with the Judge and both scrutineers checking the entry) and those ballots were moved into the disallowed folder."
The results of the Innes Ward recount were:
- Pauline Cotter – 2,638 (-15)
- Ali Jones – 2,630 (-7)
- Mark Wilson – 724 (-5)
- Carl Bromley – 384 (-5)
- Informal – 38
- Blank Voting Papers – 243 (-2)
