I finished this article just as the Morrison government announced it was abandoning its proposal for voter ID laws. So, it ran with some hasty rewriting. Might be useful if the issue resurfaces.
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John Quiggin 
There is also the completely cynical private cost-benefit analysis of those proposing voter ID legislation.
Benefits: Cheers up conservative base, may increase base turnout, discourages turnout for opposition by poor and minorities.
Costs: P*s off base by new red tape, may decrease base turnout, may enrage opposition base and increase opposition turnout. Highly visible public expenditure of no clear public benefit. Chance of changing election result in your favour negligible, but in close election, may damage legitimacy of winner anyway.
It’s basically the same analysis as for outright election rigging, for lower stakes. In both cases, it’s a risky move even if you have the votes.
The one factor that can safely be ignored is the alleged reduction in unlawful voting.
Genuine question: what examples are there of the left trying to disenfranchise voters?
I can think of many initiatives from the right: Howard legislating to close the rolls earlier; shortening the period for postal and pre-poll votes; the NSW coalition giving businesses two votes in council elections; cutting funding for increasing indigenous voting; voter ID; pretty much everything from the GOP in the last however-many-years…
…but can’t think of equivalent moves from the left. Granted, structural considerations imply that it will tend to happen more from the right (they generally have more to gain, given the ease with which different demographics can be prevented or discouraged from voting). But it would be too happy a coincidence if “my” side of politics happened to be the only virtuous one here, so I must be just ignorant of when they’ve done it.
Jones said “so I must be just ignorant of when they’ve done it.”
Willfully so Jones, or you’d be unable to conceprualise and write and post your comment.
The mirror is this way…
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=political+left+voter+disenfranchisement+examples&t=h_&ia=web
https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/29927/do-left-wing-organisations-fight-against-disenfranchisement-in-countries-states
Your comment reads like a diss, KT2, but I honestly, sincerely don’t understand what point you’re making. Is the claim that I’d have to be willfully ignorant in order to frame the question as I did, because otherwise I would realise that XYZ? In which case, I do not know what you think should substitute for “XYZ”.
Even willful ignorance can be bliss, I guess.
In any case, none of the duckduckgo results on the first page seemed to answer my question, but there was one example of leftwing vote suppression — Burma — in the stackexchange. So, thanks!
As discussed in Stack Exchange, “left” doesn’t have any real meaning in the context of Burma. But going back 50 or 60 years, Labor introduced a gerrymander in Queensland. Somewhat modified after Labor split in the mid-50s, it kept Joh Bjelke-Petersen in office for decades.
Thanks, JQ. How characteristically Keystone-esque that Labor’s gerrymander would eventually backfire!