Last week after an eight-month battle, and with the unemployment rate hovering at 10%, an extension of unemployment benefits barely squeaked through congress. It was quickly signed into law by President Obama.

Often little sympathy is extended to the unemployed who through no fault of their own suffer long and short-term job loss due to the recession.

Try multiple times an hour, think of it as a radio contest, just hit the redial button said Vermont’s former labor commissioner in early 2009 with little sympathy as she offered unemployed workers advise on how to deal long delays on her departments overwhelmed phone lines.  Unemployment remains high here in Vermont and even higher Nationwide.

Now, building on recent efforts to get this bill through congress, some national online networks of unemployed workers and labor groups hope to marshal a get-out-the-vote effort this November. These organizations are working to register the unemployed to vote and plan to offer traditional-get-out-the-vote assistance.  

Essentially, the unemployed form an enormous political constituency — more than 30 million Americans have been out of a job at some point during the recession — but they have tended to be disenfranchised. Labor groups and grassroots movements [are] hoping to change that — pressing the unemployed to do everything from calling Senate offices to showing up at Republican town halls to voting. (from the Washington Independent here and here.)

Traditionally the unemployed have low voting turnout rates, however the head of layofflist.org (started in 2008) said that “…rather than losing interest in politics since the end of the fight for extended benefits, the unemployed are ‘energized and motivated’ and have started looking forward to the fall.”

Labor groups like Working America, local political groups and the unemployed netroots are working to register the unemployed to vote and to offer rides, childcare and eldercare for jobless workers to get them voting. Of course, these sort of get-out-the-vote efforts are commonplace. They are also very effective.

A spokesman for the labor group Working America said: “We work against wrong-headed priorities favoring the rich and corporate special interests over America's well-being.”