Maine's lesser known political parties are making a play for power here, introducing a pair of election reforms they hope will loosen the grip of Republicans and Democrats on the state's nearly 1 million voters. "It's definitely like swimming upstream," Libertarian Party Chairman Mark Cenci said Wednesday of belonging to one of the state's smaller - and therefore unofficial - political parties. "But we're not going anywhere."

The first bill, sponsored by Green Independent Party Rep. John Eder of Portland, would lower the threshold to achieve official party status.

Such status brings with it a degree of credibility and, more importantly to people like Cenci, the ability to keep track of its members through official voter registration lists.

As it stands, a party's candidate must win 5 percent of the vote in a gubernatorial or presidential election to earn official status.

Under Eder's bill, a party also could keep its status if its membership totaled one half of one percent of the state's registered voters.

In Maine's case, that's about 5,000 people. Five percent of the vote in the last general election was about 25,000 votes.

"It's an undue burden for a small organization if we, as a state, ever want to provide more than two choices," said Eder, whose Green Party, under current law, stands to lose its status in 2006 if their gubernatorial candidate cannot win 5 percent of the vote.

Eder, who himself is considering a run for the Blaine House, said he was not worried about any Green candidate achieving that goal.

"Mickey Mouse can win five percent," Eder said the day before the Legislature's Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee tabled his bill, LD 329.

Nevertheless, Eder stressed that reforms were necessary to allow more minor parties into the political process.

The committee on Wednesday also tabled a second bill, LD 265, seen as beneficial to third parties. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Ethan Strimling, D-Portland, would create "instant runoff voting, which allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference rather than choose only one candidate.

The bill would aid third parties, its supporters suggest, by removing the disincentive to vote for a minor party candidate for fear that candidate would play a "spoiler" role in the election.

For instance, had instant runoff been in effect in the 2004 election, a voter could have marked Ralph Nader as her first choice for president, John Kerry as her second choice and George Bush as her third choice.

The candidate with the fewest number of first-place votes, in this case Nader, would be eliminated after the first round. Those who voted for Nader would then have their second choices counted. The process would continue until one candidate received a majority of the votes and was declared the winner.

Instant runoff voting, widely used in Australia and Ireland, has only been used in local races in select U.S. cities including San Francisco and Cambridge, Mass.

Strimling said that, considering neither of Maine's last two governors won more than 50 percent of the vote, the state should be in the forefront of any effort to adopt the instant runoff system.

"When we come down here we want to make sure we represent the majority of the people in our district," Strimling said, stressing the importance of giving the winner the clear mandate to govern that comes with majority support.

Maine would be the only state to institute such a system, and a report released this week by the Secretary of State's Office suggests, while possible, it could be costly.

The report found it could cost several million dollars to revamp the state's voting machinery and educate town clerks and voters about what would be a fundamental change in the state's election process.

Strimling, doubtful about the bill's prospects this session, said he was more interested in creating a pilot program in Portland or Bangor to test the system.

Bangor City Clerk Patti Dubois was skeptical about the change, which in all likelihood would be voluntary.

"It's feasible. I just don't know how practical it is, especially considering there are some who have a hard time connecting the arrow for one candidate, " Dubois said.

Despite Eder's contention that Maine's election laws are too strict, the state has been relatively kind to third parties, including the Greens which have kept their official status for eight years.