But why does X mark ones choice of an MP? Or alternatively, why do teachers use X for no, wrong?
Somewhere there must be fascinating documents or discussion about how this came about - I rather assume it came with secret ballots. And indeed the 2nd schedule to the Ballot Act of 1872 which first gave us secret voting in parliamentary elections contains these very precise guidelines:
The voter will …with the pencil provided … place a cross on the right hand side,
opposite the name of each candidate for whom he votes, thus X.
and warns that the vote will be lost if the X is omitted.
I have not been able to check if there was any controversy over the precise form of mark to be used (as opposed to controversy over whether secret voting would be a Good or a Bad Thing), but as the use of a cross, made in place of a signature by a person unable to write was a very old tradition, I assume not. The whole emphasis of the new voting arrangements was on the secrecy, privacy, confidentiality of the individual voter, so the traditional inscrutability of a nameless X in place of a signature carried an obvious symbolism.
Which custom our illiterate vulgar do ... keep up; by signing a cross for their mark when unable to write their names - William Blackstone 1766
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