If you’re one of the 61% of Americans who’d like to stop resetting the clock twice a year, it might be time to move to Arizona or Hawaii. The Grand Canyon and Aloha states don’t observe daylight saving time (except for the Navajo Nation in Arizona), meaning they won’t be falling back on November 6 or springing forward next March. Rather, they live in what’s surely a permanent state of bliss, never having to remember whether the latest clock change means they’re getting an hour less of sleep the next night or an hour more; nor are they subject to drastic, overnight differences in what time the sun rises and sets.
Though polls like the one cited above consistently show that Americans are tired of changing their clocks, making daylight saving time permanent is just as popular as ignoring it altogether — one poll showed 59% of respondents were in favor of the idea. The Senate unanimously passed a bill to do just that in March 2022, though the Sunshine Protection Act, as it’s called, has yet to move forward in the House. Long after Benjamin Franklin half-seriously proposed a form of it in 1784, DST was formally adopted in America via the Standard Time Act of 1918 as a wartime measure. It was abolished in 1919, with Congress overriding a veto from Woodrow Wilson, but then became the law of the land on a federal level when Lyndon Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act on April 14, 1966. States retained the option of remaining on standard time — but only two were bold enough to do so.
Media Release/Interesting Facts
