If there is a way for (at least your US customers) to have the "State" part of the Province/State drop down use the state abbreviations, https://www.ssa.gov/international/coc-docs/states.html. The field selection can say Alabama - AL or Alabama (AL) but the data in reports and such really needs to be the abbreviations. Or maybe make it a Systems setting, like date format.
This issue really comes into play when uploading new users in a Mass Import - the incoming data a person in the US would have most likely is not spelled out names and has to be converted. Also if you export user data for things like a post-course mailer packet/swag we have to fix every address manually because other systems will not intake spelled out state names for mailing.