-Caveat Lector- Carter: Elections conducted better in other countries than U.S. <http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/03/26/carter.election.reform/index.html> March 26, 2001 By Linda Petty CNN.com Senior Writer ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday that the United States does not have an acceptable democratic system because voting systems vary so much between the 4,000 counties within the country. "There's no way really for us to have any uniformity, no way to guarantee that voters' decisions will be counted accurately and there is no way to educate, in advance, a system of voters, say in a particular area like around Atlanta, because we probably have got 10 different ways to vote in this immediate television coverage (area)," Carter said. He spoke to CNN from the Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta, Georgia, which hosted the first public hearing by the National Commission on Federal Election Reform. Carter, a Democrat, and former President Gerald Ford, a Republican, are honorary co-chairs of the panel, which is politically balanced. The commission was organized by the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia and The Century Foundation. It receives no public funds, operating on grants from a group of foundations. "Today we had experts on voting procedures, we had professors who know the history of our voting laws and we also had elected officials who've actually observed problems and possible solutions in different parts of the world today," he said. Carter said the panel was formed only because all of America was embarrassed by last year's presidential voting in Florida, where arguments over half-punched, punch-card ballots held up the final outcome. But Carter said several other states, including his home state of Georgia, would probably fare as badly under such close scrutiny over ballot count accuracy. He also said the only good thing about the different systems in the thousands of U.S. counties is that they make good testing grounds so the panel can check on what works and what doesn't. Carter said the panel is looking at ways to improve "the way that people register, the way that people vote and to guarantee that when their votes are cast that they'll be counted accurately and to make sure that we don't discriminate against voters who might be poorer or live in a precinct that has a bad system." He suggested that newer electronic systems may be the most accurate. Carter said Congress is so divided over election reform that lawmakers can't even agree on how to form a select committee to look into the matter. Congress last week held two days of hearings on how to avoid a repeat of the presidential election fiasco but ended the hearings with a partisan split on how to proceed. The former president is well known for his work as an observer at elections around the world. He said he has seen elections conducted better in other countries such as Guyana, which he visited last week. "It was almost a perfect election in that there were no errors basically in the way ballots were marked and later counted. And we don't have anything like that in this country," he said. "We have a long way to go in meeting the standards of most democracies on earth." Carter also noted that 88 percent of registered voters in Guyana went to the polls. "We have about as low a turnout as any developed country on earth and we also have more errors in our voting places than any other country in which I've been involved and we have less incentive to make those corrections," he said. He suggested changing election day to a holiday such as Veterans Day to make it more convenient for voters to get to the polls. 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