Election Ballots Shed New Light on Cursive Writing Debate

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In the 26 states that don’t require cursive instruction, the lack of ’set signatures’ by younger voters who never learned penmanship may be a concern.

Election workers, attempting to verify ballots in the 2024 presidential election race, ran into difficulties and delays because signatures on mail-in ballots didn’t match those by the same individuals on Department of Motor Vehicle records.

In Nevada, Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said on Nov. 5 that young people “who may not have a set signature” caused delays to the verification process, along with older voters who may have signed their names differently throughout their lives, or those who were recently married but didn’t update their last name changes on voter registration records.

“Since the passage of Automatic Voter Registration, more Nevadans than ever sign their names on digital screens that may look different than their pen-to-paper signatures,” Aguilar said in an Election Day statement.

The ballot-counting snafus shed light on another choice that has divided the country during the digital age, though not in a partisan way: 24 states require cursive instruction in public schools.

Nevada is not on that list, nor is New York, the fourth most populated state in the nation behind California, Texas, and Florida, all of which require cursive instruction, according to MyCursive.com, an education company that regularly surveys states.

The Golden State mandated penmanship instruction with the passage of Assembly Bill 446 in October of last year. It requires handwriting instruction in grades 1-6. Kentucky passed a similar law in April, though its mandate doesn’t take effect until the 2025-2026 academic year.

On Nov. 8, MyCursive issued a new report titled “Can Cursive Swing an Election (2028, We’re Looking at You)?”

“Gen Z votes: 50 percent-plus don’t know cursive. They have to either print their name or try their best to sign, creating potential mismatches. These votes are set aside, giving limited time to cure the ballot. No cure = no vote. Multiple elections, especially in swing states, are coming down to a few thousand, hundreds, or even tens of votes,” the report said.

Cursive instruction faded with the onset of digital technology. On its website, school supply company Geddes lists some of the pros and cons of cursive instruction.

In addition to the continued need for official signatures in voting, banking, and legal matters, continuing cursive instruction is also essential for preserving and interpreting history and developing fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination, Geddes states. Cursive’s linked-together form of writing words teaches learners to grasp whole words instead of parts of words and strengthens reading and writing instruction, Geddes notes.

By contrast, according to Geddes’ list of potential reasons for quitting the instruction, most functions for writing are or will be electronic, including thank-you cards and letters. In most high school and college classes, students take notes on laptops but can still write in print when necessary, “and many people honestly don’t care what their writing looks like.”

Morgan Polikoff, a professor of education at the University of Southern California, said the term cursive was replaced with “handwriting” when the Common Core State Standards for English/language arts and math instruction were created more than 10 years ago and adopted by state departments of education.

“There was no evidence one way or another that cursive really matters,” Polikoff told The Epoch Times.

There was pushback on both ends of the political spectrum, he said. Liberals thought cursive should be preserved as an art form and a tool to address learning differences, while conservatives believed students should be able to read the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Over time, many school districts and state departments of education restored cursive mandates.

Polikoff said the main issue is whether the time spent teaching and learning cursive justifies the need for this form of writing at a time when most people use phones or laptops instead of pen and paper, and when signatures as a form of verification or identification can easily be replaced by technologies like electronic thumbprinting.

When an academic year is limited to under seven hours a day for 180 days, “you have to make decisions about what not to include,” Polikoff said.

He said most teachers and parents he has talked to noted that younger students enjoy learning cursive because they see it as acquiring an adult skill. But given the time crunch schools deal with and the technology that’s available to accelerate learning, one compromise is to teach students how to read cursive and establish their signature but not spend weeks learning how to write in cursive, let alone requiring that writing style until middle school.

“It’s easily addressed in other ways,” Polikoff said.

Greta Nagel, founder of the Museum of Teaching and Learning in Anaheim, Calif., said many Americans cherish cursive as a family value that brings generations together, so it would be a shame to let it fade from classrooms.

“A lot of our senior citizens are appalled that young people can’t read what they [seniors] are writing anymore,” Nagel told The Epoch Times. “Technology is necessary, but will it get to the point where there are digital solutions instead of eye contact and voice-to-voice conversations with parents? Grandparents still want to write their loved ones, and they still want someone to read those old letters someday.”

Gianna Miceli, a freshman at the State University of New York at Brockport, said she learned cursive in third grade but has rarely used it beyond reading historical documents in high school history class, signing her name at the bank, or submitting an absentee ballot ahead of Nov. 5. All of her elementary and high school assignments were completed on a laptop. The education major, who hopes to become a teacher, said that “people should still learn how to sign their name and understand how to read cursive.”

Casey Felton, a high school senior, said her third-grade cursive instruction in Ballston Spa, New York state, was limited to three letters: S, M, and N. She printed her name to get a driver’s license and completed waiver forms to compete in youth rodeo competitions.

Felton decided to learn cursive on her own after she couldn’t read a birthday card from her great-grandmother. She believes she could easily develop a signature with a little practice. Either way, she thinks cursive instruction should at least include learning the entire alphabet and some writing repetition in elementary school.

“In 100 years,” she said, “we’ll still need to be able to read the Constitution.”