Administration > Settings > Geographic > Countries
This is where you can enable and disable countries that are used within Freedom and the shopping cart.
There are settings for each country to require certain address fields, set the currency, simplified tax style, and other items.
Administration > Settings > Geographic > Country States
Country States are used to set predetermined states, or provinces, within a country. This will help to standardize the states, or provinces. This will help with taxation rules, promotion conditions, and other areas.
The setting under Countries that controls how to show the state would use the Country States set up in a Drop Down menu. This would eliminiate the free-type field that can cause nonstandardized entry.