The practice of moving clocks backwards by an hour each fall then “springing forward” every spring could soon come to an end, provided two houses — the Oklahoma House of Representatives and the U.S. House of Representatives — take action.

On Feb. 28, the Oklahoma Senate approved a measure by Sen. Blake Cowboy Stephens, R-Tahlequah, to lock in Daylight Saving Time (DST) year-round. The legislation is contingent on federal passage of the Sunshine Protection Act, which gives states the option of permanently adopting DST or practicing Standard Time. Stephens’ bill has advanced to the House for consideration.

At the federal level, the Senate introduced the Sunshine Protection last year, but the House never voted on it, so it was reintroduced last week.

Senator James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, tweeted Thursday that he and Senator Marco Rubio, R-Florida, are leading the charge against the “outdated” practice of switching time back and forth.

“I don’t know a parent or pet owner who isn’t dreading daylight saving time this weekend. That’s why I’m leading the Sunshine Protection Act with Sen. Marco. Rubio. It’s time to #LockTheClocks for good,” Lankford tweeted. His message contained a short video in which he expressed his sentiments about DST.

“This is left over from World War II, when we were literally voting as a nation to change the time back so we could have more cooking oil, more heating oil and more lighting oil in World War I. This is not where we are anymore,” Lankford said in the video.

“This ritual of changing time twice a year is stupid. Locking the clock has overwhelming bipartisan and popular support. This Congress, I hope that we can finally get this done,” Rubio said in a statement posted to his website.

DST History The DST movement began in April 1917, when President Woodrow Wilson declared war. A group called the National Daylight Saving Convention distributed postcards showing Uncle Sam holding a garden hoe and rifle, turning back the hands of a huge pocket watch. Voters were asked to sign and mail postcards to their congressmen that declared, “if I have more daylight, I can work longer for my country. We need every hour of light.” Posters chided, “Uncle Sam, your enemies have been up and are at work in the extra hour of daylight— when will YOU wake up?”

With public opinion in its favor, Congress officially declared that all clocks would be moved ahead one hour at 2 a.m. on March 31, 1918. Americans were encouraged to turn off their lights and go to bed earlier than they normally did—at around 8 p.m.

According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, many Americans wrongly point to farmers as the driving force behind DST. In fact, farmers were its strongest opponents and, as a group, stubbornly resisted the change from the beginning.

When the war was over, farmers and working- class people began to speak out. They demanded an end to DST, claiming that it benefited only office workers and the leisure class. The controversy put a spotlight on the growing gap between rural and urban dwellers. As a writer for the Literary Digest put it, “The farmer objects to doing his early chores in the dark merely so that his city brother, who is sound asleep at the time, may enjoy a daylight motor ride at eight in the evening.”

The DST experiment lasted only until 1920, when the law was repealed due to opposition from dairy farmers. No fewer than 28 bills to repeal DST had been introduced to Congress, and the law was removed from the books.

The subject did not come up again until after the attack on Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 7, 1941, and the United States was once again at war.

During World War II, DST was imposed once again (this time yearround) to save fuel. Clocks were set one hour ahead to save energy. After the war DST started being used on and off in different states, beginning and ending on days of their choosing.

Inconsistent adherence to time zones among the states created considerable confusion with interstate bus and train service. To remedy the situation, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act in 1966, establishing consistent use of DST within the United States: Clocks were to be set ahead one hour on the last Sunday in April and one hour back on the last Sunday in October.

That was the rule, but some state legislatures took exception via a loophole that had been built into the law. Residents of Hawaii and most of Arizona did not change their clocks. Residents of Indiana, which straddles the Eastern and Central time zones, were sharply divided on DST, with some counties employing it and others not.

In 1986, Congress approved a bill to increase the period of DST, moving the start to the first Sunday in April. The goal was to conserve oil used for generating

electricity—an estimated 300,000 barrels annually.

The current DST period was established with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which went into effect in 2007.