The Electoral Commission (EC) has refuted claims by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) of attempting to rig the upcoming December 7 elections.

This comes after the NDC alleged that the Commission was secretly printing some 150,000 extra ballot papers.

In agreement with political parties, the EC is mandated to print an extra 5 percent of the ballot sheets for each polling station which will in turn solve the possible cases of spoilt ballots.

The Electoral Commission reacting to the claims in a statement on November 3 described the claims as untrue and must be disregarded by the public.

"The NDC alleges that the Commission has secretly increased the number of ballot papers being printed by the Assembly Press Limited, one of the printing houses selected to print the 2020 ballots. This is untrue and we entreat the Public to disregard this falsehood," parts of the statement read.

On the allegation of the Electoral Commission not providing the Political Parties with the serial numbers of the ballot papers, the Electoral Commission explained that it has never provided Political Parties with serial numbers of ballot papers.

"The Commission cannot generate the serial numbers of all
seventeen million (17 million) plus ballot papers. As has been the practice, serial numbers are generated by the Printing Houses and are provided to both the Commission and Political Parties after each batch of printing is completed," the statement explained.

"The Electoral Commission finds it difficult to understand why the NDC would seek to cause fear and apprehension around a transparent and open process such as the printing of ballots. This is unacceptable," the Commission added.

Read the full statement below: