AUGUSTA – A Republican senate candidate’s decision to withdraw his appeal of a hotly contested ballot recount cleared the way Tuesday for Gov. Angus S. King to certify the Nov. 5 election results.

Any further disputes in the Wiscasset-area District 16 Senate seat will have to take place in the Senate when members of the 121st Legislature are sworn in Dec. 4. Late Monday afternoon, Chris Hall, a Bristol Democrat, was declared the apparent winner by a nine-vote margin over Leslie Fossel of Alna after a recount that spanned several days.

However, 44 ballots in the race remain contested by one party or the other for various reasons, including that the wrong color pencil was used to mark some ballots. Fossel continued to maintain Tuesday that if the 44 disputed ballots were counted he would win the race by 5 votes, but he withdrew his appeal to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court of a Superior Court decision that allowed the ballots to go uncounted.

The judge ruled Monday that his court lacked jurisdiction since the Maine Constitution specifies that each house of the Legislature will be the determiner of its own elections and the qualifications of its members.

“It is apparent that the final arbiter of this election will in fact be the Maine Senate,” Fossel said in a prepared statement issued Tuesday. “It is our goal to have the Senate review the remaining 44 ballots in the District 16 race in a fair and impartial way. This is the only way to ensure that the will of the voters is reflected and that the true winner emerges.”

Facing a Tuesday deadline to certify the election results, the governor completed the certification process which sets the stage for an incoming Democratic sweep in the State House. For the first time in 16 years, Democrats control the governor’s office, the House and the Senate, where Hall’s inclusion will give the party an 18-17 majority.

“I’m pleased and relieved that it’s over,” Hall said. “It’s time to move on. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

When the Democrat-controlled Senate convenes next week, the resolution of the disputed ballots in District 16 will likely be a top priority for Republicans.

But the outcome of any inquiry appears all but certain since Hall maintains if all the disputed ballots were made public, it would be clear he had won a majority of the vote. Under those circumstances, Hall said he would have no choice but to vote for himself if the legitimacy of his right to sit in the Senate was questioned.

Sen. Beverly Daggett, an Augusta Democrat and her caucus’ candidate for the Senate presidency, said Tuesday any challenges against Hall would get a fair hearing before a Senate committee.

“This is a question of taking the ballots that are there and counting them properly,” Daggett said. “We’ve had a very fair process so far and I think that the process the Senate will come up with will also be a fair one.”