Carter: U.S. voting systems unacceptable March 27, 2001 Web posted at: 10:04 AM EST (1504 GMT) ATLANTA (CNN) -- Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday the United States does not have an acceptable democratic system because voting systems vary so much among the country's 4,000 counties. "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, which was hosting 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 politically balanced panel. 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 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," he said. Carter said the panel was formed because Americans were embarrassed by last year's presidential voting in Florida, where arguments over half-punched ballots held up the final outcome. Carter said Florida was not alone in its vote-counting woes, and suggested that several other states, including Georgia, would fare as badly under such close scrutiny. 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. 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 has worked as an independent 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," he said. "And we don't have anything like that in this country. We have a long way to go in meeting the standards of most democracies on earth." Carter noted that 88 percent of registered voters in Guyana went to the polls, a turnout far higher than typical for U.S. presidential elections. "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 turnout could be boosted if Election Day were to fall on a holiday, such as Veterans Day, to make it more convenient for voters to get to the polls. "Veterans, including myself, would be very proud to have us choose a president and U.S. senators and congressmen and other state officials on our holiday," said Carter.