AUGUSTA – Unable to reach a verdict last year, Maine lawmakers are still reviewing a proposal that would allow a once-prevalent but no longer widespread election procedure known as fusion voting.

As practiced in a handful of states including New York, Connecticut and Vermont, fusion voting – also called cross-endorsement or open ballot – basically allows a candidate to run as a designee of more than one political party.

“We do, sort of,” says Vermont Secretary of State Deb Markowitz. She should know, as a Democrat who also has been endorsed by Republicans and progressives.

Details differ from place to place.

Maine, one of several states considering fusion voting this year, would establish a definition of minor political party and allow such groups to nominate candidates who are also running as major party nominees as their own general election candidates.

“A simple election reform,” says its chief sponsor, House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, D-North Haven, “that gives candidates for elected office the freedom to run with the endorsement of more than one political party, [and] perhaps more importantly, voters get a choice of a candidate and a choice of a party.”

Detailing her reasoning to the Legislature’s Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee, Pingree added: “Voters don’t always know where candidates stand. An endorsement from a minor party can clarify a candidate’s positions and allow voters to cast a more informed vote. Endorsements from other organizations convey this same information. But endorsements right on the ballot are accessible to every voter.”

A minor party could qualify for the Maine ballot by collecting signatures from registered voters totaling at least 2.5 percent of the overall vote cast in the most recent gubernatorial election. Currently, Maine makes no distinction between major and minor parties – there are Democrats, Republicans and Greens – and the threshold for formation is 5 percent of a gubernatorial vote.

Backers in the Democrat-controlled Maine House say open ballot voting in Connecticut, Delaware, South Carolina and New York, where the system is used most actively, has not produced a profusion of new parties.

Republicans who make up the minorities on both the Maine House and Senate have not embraced the proposal, and some veteran Democrats with traditional views on party loyalty are unenthusiastic.

“The dumbest thing I’ve seen in a long time,” says Democratic state Sen. John Martin of Eagle Lake, who previously served for two decades as speaker of the Maine House.

What’s now known as fusion voting was commonplace in much of the 1800s, advocates say. According to the Progressive America Fund, Democrat William Jennings Bryan also ran on the Populist line in 28 states in the 1896 presidential election. But the system was curbed in the early 20th century and is rarely used today.

A referendum proposal to permit fusion voting in Massachusetts was soundly defeated by a statewide vote in 2006, and a tug of war over it continues in several states.

A count offered by the National Conference of State Legislatures had three states – Maine, Pennsylvania and Virginia – considering adoption as 2008 began and one state – South Carolina – weighing a prohibition.

Leading the effort to win acceptance of fusion voting are some elements of the labor union movement and some community organizing groups who argue that minor parties can allow people wishing to send a message but not wanting to vote for a noncompetitive candidate to bolster their leverage on major party candidates.

“The major party candidates can adapt their views to court minor party support – or they can choose not to do so,” wrote L. Sandy Maisel, director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement at Colby College, in a Kennebec Journal op-ed in 2006.

“Voters can support certain issues by voting for a candidate on a minor party ticket without the fear of wasting their votes,” added Maisel, who classified himself as neither for nor against the proposal.

Election law experimentation in Maine, which has a part-time Legislature, a flourishing referendum culture and virtually no deadlines for voter registration, has been rampant in modern times.

Maine imposed term limits, effective in 1996, through a referendum in 1993 that generated little opposition. The citizen initiative laid down restrictions on consecutive service in legislative office, and for the positions of state treasurer, secretary of state, attorney general and state auditor. A referendum proposal put out by the Legislature to ease the restrictions failed last fall.

In 1996, voters approved Maine’s Clean Election system, under which participating candidates for the Legislature or governor may receive public funding if they agree to forgo most private funds and to limit spending.

Nonparticipating candidates may raise and spend money without limitation. If a participating candidate is outspent by a candidate raising private funds, matching money becomes available.

Public financing on the state level began in 2000.