Former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday that unchecked political contributions are "legal bribery of candidates" and denounced a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made possible unlimited spending by outside groups, including corporations and labor unions.

"It's accepted fact," Carter said during a speech in Atlanta. "It's legal bribery of candidates. And that repayment may be in the form of an ambassadorship to someone who has raised three or four hundred thousand dollars to help a candidate get elected."

Carter spoke at a forum where an agency of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe released its report on last year's U.S. election. The U.S. government invited the European agency to observe the process.

He said the U.S. Supreme Court made a "very stupid" decision by removing limits on independent campaign spending by businesses and labor unions, which the court found was a constitutionally protected form of political speech. The Democrat said that he and his Republican opponents used public financing to run their general election campaigns in 1976 and 1980.

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Carter said that while elections in the United States once set an example for the world, the country's reputation diminished in 2000 when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened in a Florida vote recount, effectively deciding the election in favor of Republican George W. Bush. He also criticized GOP-led state legislatures for changing polling hours in ways that Carter said were meant to frustrate likely Democratic voters.