Comment by wvenable

5 hours ago

As someone else pointed everyone is already on DST for approximately 65% of the year. This just removes the remaining 35%. Picking standard time would have been a much bigger change.

Ultimately, it's entirely arbitrary anyway. The only issue is that American states cannot pick DST without a federal law change.

> As someone else pointed everyone is already on DST for approximately 65% of the year. This just removes the remaining 35%. Picking standard time would have been a much bigger change.

This 65% started during the Dubya presidency (source: I was there updating tzdata on systems), and previous to that it was a 50/50 split.

So 65/35 or 50/50 is arbitrary.

  • But the reasoning for that was a preference for DST.

    Obviously all this is arbitrary including standard time.

    • > But the reasoning for that was a preference for DST.

      There was no reasoning for the Dubya alteration: the change was not debated anywhere, and (AIUI) no one was ever able to figure out how it actually got slipped into the legislation.