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Why we do things we do

Because that’s the way they’ve always been done

Most of the U.S. turned back clocks last night, so there are multiple articles online about it.

The same CNN landing page that asks “Why won’t Congress make Daylight Saving Time permanent?” and argues the policy is popular includes “Permanent Daylight Saving Time will hurt our health, experts say.”

One origin story for Daylight Saving Time cited by CNN comes from the US Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics:

Time zones were introduced by the major railroad companies in 1883 to resolve confusion and avoid train crashes caused by different local times. As the United States entered World War I in 1918, the government delegated time zone supervision to the federal organization in charge of railroad regulation—the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). The new concept of DST was also overseen by the ICC to assist in the war effort. Initially introduced by Germany during the war to conserve fuel and power by extending daylight hours, the United States soon followed suit.

So why do we still do shift time zones twice a year when we’re not at war in the age of GPS and satellite communications? Because 1883.

Sleep experts writing in the Washington Post argue that permanent Daylight Saving Time is harmful to developing kids:

This would all be tremendously bad for kids. Because of the later biological pacing of the teenage brain, waking at 7 a.m. already feels to young people like waking at 5 a.m. With permanent daylight saving time, it would feel like 4 a.m. This would put a serious strain on teen mental health. The result would be, among other things, shortened sleep for a population that is already severely sleep-deprived and a potential uptick in rates of depression, when teens are already struggling with elevated levels of depressive symptoms and suicidal thinking.

And let’s not forget: A policy that’s bad for teens is bad for the rest of us. Sleep-deprived teens are driving next to us on the freeway. Sleep-deprived teens are twice as likely to experience mental health symptoms, which affect families, schools and health-care systems.

Working with volunteers during early voting, I asked several if they knew why we vote on Tuesday. Had they seen Jacob Soboroff’s brief TED talk on it? Nope.

So, why Tuesdays?

“It is just a stupid law from 1845,” Soboroff explains.

Soboroff concludes that with introduction of the Weekend Voting Act in 2017, “we are now on the verge of changing American history.”

The bill went nowhere. It still specified voting in November. Since 1845.

Every election, people by the dozens call in to volunteer to drive people to the polls on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. We still do it. Activists from Black neighborhoods still do it. Except with the advent of 2-1/2 weeks of one-stop early voting here in 2001, rides to the polls has been a declining part of our get-out-the-vote operation for well over a decade.

In 2008, Obama’s regional team might send over a spreadsheet with 20-30 requests for rides their canvassers collected every other day. And in 2022? Maybe six requests. So why do people think driving people to the polls is still the most important way they can help? Because it’s what you do. It’s what’s always been done.

Like Daylight Saving Time. Like voting on Tuesday.

With the advent of 2-1/2 weeks of early voting, the old model of precinct organizing, of block captains getting out their vote on Election Day, is all but obsolete. Two-thirds of the vote is already cast here by Election Day. Elections in most states are no longer one-day, 14-hour marathons. But the decades-old model persists.

Why? It’s a tradition.

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