8 powers of the Commissioner. He must realize that if something goes wrong during an election there may be grounds for the voiding of the election afterwards and that may prove costly but he is the man with the power to correct matters or face a costly by-election afterwards…." At page 3 Woods J concluded: "I am satisfied that the Constitutional right to vote and the right to be elected to public office is adequately protected by the discretion granted to the Electoral Commissioner in the Organic Law and by the procedure to challenge an election in s 206." This conclusion is consistent with the recent decision of the Supreme Court in Special Reference Pursuant to Section 19; Reference by Attorney-General for the Independent State of Papua New Guinea (Unreported and Unnumbered Judgment of the Supreme Court dated 26th July 2002) in which the Court (Amet CJ, Kapi DCJ, Sheehan J, Sakora J, Sevua J) considered the powers of the Electoral Commission under s 97 of the Organic Law. Several questions were referred for consideration by the Court including the questions relating to the extent of the power and the circumstances under which the Head of State on advice may exercise the discretion under s 97. At page 8 the Court held: "The authority to organize and conduct elections is given to the Electoral Commission. The National Court is given jurisdiction to enquire into and determine the validity of such elections. The Constitution and the Organic Law set out how and when elections shall be held, given time periods and the limits for the various processes of election sufficient to enable nomination of candidates, polling, scrutiny and returns of writs of election. These start with the prescription that National Election shall be held within 3 months of the anniversary of the 5th year of the current Parliament and return. But the Constitution and the Organic Law also provide for the possibility of failure of the elections to be completed in time or at all. Consequently, power is given to the Head of State acting on advice of Electoral Commission to either allow further time for election or returns to be completed or to issue a writ for supplementary election to be concluded as soon as is practicable after it is determined that an election has failed. The power to determine that an election has failed, and the exercise of the discretion to make such a determination lies solely with the Electoral Commission." The Court then set out s 97 of the Organic Law and continued: "This section empowers the Commission to determine that an election has failed if satisfied on grounds reasonable and sufficient to the Commission that a return cannot be made for an electorate. In Questions 1 and 2 circumstances of violence, intimidation, destruction of ballot boxes, tampering with votes and the like, are cited as grounds for determination of