Bring your own pen or pencil

My polling card for the Police and Crime Commissioner* and Parish
Elections on 6 May has arrived. One of the Covid-19 requests is to
"Bring your own pen or pencil". I trust that they will have pencils,
not just for those who forget to take one, but also as a matter of
principle.

A homeless person has just as much right to vote as anyone else
and may not have ready access to a writing implement.
The government wants us to do most of our official "paperwork" online.
Paper based communication and note-taking might now be considered a luxury.
(However, I am *not* suggesting that we should move to electronic voting
- it is much easier for an observer to verify that the paper trail
has not been tampered with than the trail of bits.)

Does anyone know the history of the pencil on a string in the polling
booth ? I'd like to think it goes back to the days when illiterate
people would sign their name with a cross, annotated with "Joe Bloggs
his mark", but compulsory free school education started in 1891 and
40 per cent of adult men and all women were excluded from voting until
1918, so that doesn't seem likely.

* Is the Crime Commissioner the person in purchasing who orders the thefts ?