We’re Overdue To End Daylight Saving Time
On Sunday, Arizonans, Hawaiians, and residents of several U.S. territories happily went about their days with no need to worry about a task that annoys most Americans; we didn’t have to change our clocks to accommodate the annual switch to daylight saving time. And we won’t have to switch back to standard time in the fall because that’s what our clocks display year-round. A majority of our countrymen would like to join us in benevolently neglecting our clocks’ time settings.
Americans Want To Stop Changing Their Clocks
“As the March 9 switch to daylight saving time (DST) approaches in the U.S., the majority of Americans (54%) say they are ready to do away with the practice,” Gallup reported last week. That’s a huge shift from the 1990s, when almost three-quarters of Americans thought changing their clocks twice a year was a fine idea. This is an area of rare bipartisan agreement, with majorities of both Democrats and Republicans eager to ditch clock changes.
A plurality of 48 percent favors keeping standard time all year; 24 percent would put daylight saving time in place throughout the year.
Two years ago, YouGov pollsters also found a majority (62 percent) favored ending the clock-switching ritual. But respondents in that poll were evenly divided over whether clocks should be permanently set to standard time or daylight saving time. Fatigue over fiddling with clocks and screwing up schedules was the unifying factor. Adjusting clocks is a century-long experiment with which people are weary.
“Daylight saving time was introduced at the national level in 1918, the last year of World War I, when the U.S. sought to conserve fuel by extending daylight working hours as a wartime necessity,” notes Gallup. It was reimposed during World War II, then became a local option until 1966. That year federal law changed to allow states to opt in or out of clock changes so long as they did so statewide (except for those straddling time zones that could split the difference).
Since then, the federal government has fiddled with the start and stop dat
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