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Rand Wilson is running for state auditor—sort of.

The longtime union organizer is hitting the campaign trail as the Working Families Party candidate for the post. But he doesn’t harbor any real hopes of unseating five-term Democratic incumbent Joe DeNucci, nor does he really want to. What’s more, Wilson is generally scornful of tilting-at-windmills campaigns by third-party candidates. Which, in a convoluted way, explains why he is running in the first place.

Wilson’s real goal is to capture at least 3 percent of the vote against DeNucci, who has no Republican challenger. With that, the 53-year-old Somerville resident would secure official party status for the Working Families Party.

But the party is not looking to run its own candidates for office. Instead, it hopes to be able to piggyback onto the campaigns of like-minded candidates under an electoral scheme that advocates say can give voters more choices and leverage, without necessarily giving them more names to choose from.

That’s the idea behind a November ballot question that would bring “fusion voting” to Massachusetts. That system, now used in seven other states, allows candidates’ names to appear multiple times on a ballot, under different party labels. Under fusion voting, a candidate can be the nominee of one of the two major parties, for example, while also appearing on the ballot under the banner of a third party with a more focused agenda. Votes for that candidate under each party label are added together for their total tally.

The effort here is the brainchild of a coalition of labor union and community groups who hope to use the system to hold politicians’ feet to the fire by being able to show how much of their electoral backing comes from supporters of labor issues, expanded health care access, or other bread-and-butter liberal causes. If Question 2 passes, the activists would focus largely on getting Democratic candidates who are sympathetic to their views to also seek the nomination of the Working Families Party—which has established a strong presence in New York, where fusion voting has been in place for decades. The more votes a candidate gets under the Working Families Party designation, goes the reasoning, the greater the allegiance they will feel to the party’s agenda.

“Having a separate ballot line is a way for me, as an activist, to have a weapon I never had before to make people accountable,” says Judy Meredith, a veteran human services lobbyist and one of the ballot campaign organizers.

Campaign supporters say fusion voting will empower citizens, providing a way to “vote your values,” without the potential spoiler effect that comes with backing third-party candidacies. But skeptics wonder whether fusion voting is likely to spread more confusion than democracy.

“I just think it’s unnecessary and could be confusing,” says Rep. Anthony Petruccelli, an East Boston Democrat who serves as House chairman of the Joint Committee on Election Laws. “I think that process is odd in New York. I know it’s practiced there; I don’t know if it makes it right.”

Fusion voting was actually once more norm than anomaly, used in most of the US, including Massachusetts, in the 19th century. In a Republican-led drive, it was outlawed in many states following the 1896 presidential election, in which Democrat William Jennings Bryan also picked up votes under two other party designations.

While acknowledging the system would take some getting used to, advocates say fusion voting ultimately reduces voter confusion by making it more clear what candidates stand for. “In Massachusetts, the Democratic [Party] tent is so broad that it’s mushy,” says Robert Ross, a sociologist at Clark University.

But that is precisely why some groups that share the same progressive causes with ballot question advocates are not supporting the measure.

Fusion voting can be powerful in close races between Democrats and Republicans, where the votes won by a candidate on a separate party line might provide the margin of victory. But with Democrats dominating the Legislature, holding every congressional seat, and usually occupying most statewide offices here, most battles take place within Democratic primaries, where there is no opportunity to support a candidate under a separate party designation.

Fusion voting is “a general election tool, so it’s irrelevant [here] 85 percent of the time,” says Andi Mullen, legislative agent for AFSCME Council 93, which represents public- sector workers.

Still, the Mass Ballot Freedom Campaign, the organization leading the drive for Question 2, has the support of 46 union locals and community-based groups. What’s more, they say the fusion voting tool is available to groups across the political spectrum, again pointing to New York, where the Conservative Party endorsement has long been virtually a required component of any successful statewide Republican candidacy.

But here, there has been little enthusiasm shown for the ballot question by groups on the right. Indeed, given the sources of support for the proposal, longtime anti-tax activist Barbara Anderson is holding in check her general impulse to support efforts to open up the political process.

“Having our politicians kiss up to labor any more than they do? I’m not sure that’s possible,” says Anderson. “Anything being pushed by unions is going to be bad for taxpayers.”