Voters embrace ending time changes
Californians warmed to the idea of year-round daylight-saving time, approving an initiative that would urge state lawmakers to junk the annual springing forward and falling back.
With 29 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, Proposition 7 was leading 62 percent to 38 percent. Takeaway: It’s a long way from here to year-round daylightsaving time. First, the Legislature would have to approve it by a two-thirds vote. Then Congress would have to allow California to deviate from standard time when most of the rest of the nation shifts to it. Background: Prop. 7 called for letting state lawmakers decide whether to repeal the Daylight Saving Time Act of 1949, which requires clocks to be set forward by an hour every spring and fall back an hour every autumn.
Assemblyman Kansen Chu, D-San Jose, introduced the idea of going to the voters to start the process. The Legislature and governor said OK.
The shift would allow children to spend more time outside in the sunlight during winter and encourage people to eat out more, which could be an economic boon for local businesses, Chu argued. Additionally, heart attacks and workplace injuries could be reduced by not having to struggle with getting up an hour earlier in the spring, he said, citing a 2009 Michigan State University study.
Not everyone agrees. The U.S. went to full-time daylight-saving time in 1974 to save energy during an Arab oil embargo, but post-8 a.m. sunrises in winter proved unpopular, and the country returned to split times.
Of course, no daylight is saved during daylight-saving time. It just gets moved around on the clock face.
If year-round daylight-saving time had been in effect on Election Day, early-morning voters would have voted in the dark and late voters would have had a glimmer of light. But because clocks went back to standard time on Nov. 4, early-morning voters cast ballots in sunlight and evening voters cast ballots in the dark. On Election Day, there were exactly 10 hours and 26 minutes of sunlight. Voters can’t change that. Chronicle staff writer Steve Rubenstein
contributed to this report.