LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Sunday, November 6th, otherwise known as the date when Daylight Saving Time (DST) ends at 2:00 a.m., always brings back the yearly argument with my husband about how much extra time I am gaining. He contends that I have only gained an extra hour of sleep on that particular day. I argue that I actually get an hour of extra sleep EVERY morning as I would have been getting up an hour earlier EVERY morning.

And yes, it’s Daylight SAVING time, not Daylight SAVINGS time in case another marital argument happens to come up for any of us.

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DST, the practice of advancing clocks an hour during warmer months so that darkness falls at a later clock time, is often called “Spring Forward” when it happens the second Sunday in March and “Fall Back” when we turn the clocks back an hour on the first Sunday in November.

The idea of DST was first proposed in 1784 by Benjamin Franklin. He sent a satirical letter to the editor of “The Journal of Paris” and suggested that waking up earlier in the summer would economize on candle usage and would result in considerable financial savings.

The majority of America observes DST with the exceptions of Hawaii, most of Arizona, and the territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

It was the Uniform Time Act of 1966 that established the system of uniform DST throughout the United States after the idea had been tried and ended several times by the federal government over the years – and after the states were left to their own devices for a while on when, how long and if they wanted to adopt the time changes.

It’s been reported that many farmers didn’t like DST because it gave them less time in the morning to harvest crops and get milk to market. It wasn’t popular in a lot of places and different states did different things. Ultimately, it was the transportation industry who pushed the federal government to reestablish a federal regulation of DST with the Uniform Time Act because they said that a lack of consistency across the country was too confusing.

Over the years, there have been many complaints from the public about changing the clocks back and forth with at least 350 bills and resolutions introduced in just about every state to establish DST or to use the standard time as the baseline.

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People have complained about how the time changes interfere in their lives including with medication, health issues, schedules with children and pets, sleep patterns, driving in the dark, work issues and more.

Some people currently think that the government has ended the time change switcheroo but that is not the case.

Although the U.S. Senate passed the “Sunshine Protection Act” which would permanently activate DST, it has not yet been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives. The legislation was introduced by Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and it was passed unanimously in March of 2022. It legislates that the time used for DST is the new standard time and that DST was to be abolished. If passed by the House and signed into law by President Biden, DST would be the new standard time beginning November 5, 2023.

Senator Rubio said, “If we can get this passed, we don’t have to do this stupidity any more. Pardon the pun, but this is an idea whose time has come.”

After the legislation passed the Senate, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine urged the House to step back and look at the pros and cons of the legislation because they didn’t have time to debate the proposal before it was rushed through the Senate.

The sleep medicine group doesn’t support the Sunshine Protection Act and has research to show that the sudden switch to DST in March is associated with significant public health and safety risks including an increase in heart attacks, mood disorders and motor vehicle crashes. They prefer the adoption of year-round standard time which they say better aligns with our bodies and provides benefits for public health and safety. They cite other medical, scientific and civic groups who agree with them including the American College of Chest Physicians and the World Sleep Society.

In 1967, Michigan voters actually exempted themselves from the Uniform Time Act by approving Public Act 6 of 1967, rejecting DST and remaining on standard time. They didn’t observe DST until 1972. Because the DST folks were relentless about the issue, they came up with a petition of about 200,000 signatures which brought a DST referendum to a statewide vote. Voters said no to DST once again but a few years later there was yet another petition drive led by the Michigan and Detroit Chambers of Commerce. And so on November 7, 1972, Michigan repealed Public Act 6 which had exempted them from DST and went on DST in 1973.

In 2021, Michigan lawmakers passed legislation to get rid of the time changes but it’s contingent on whether Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio also decide to use DST year-round. And then the changes would have to be approved by Congress.

A poll conducted in April by CBS/YouGov found that 46% of Americans want year-round DST and 33% want year-round standard time, with only 21% wanting to leave things as they are. Older Americans were a little more inclined to prefer year-round DST but that’s probably because a lot of them get up at the crack of dawn.