On November 1, Washington Will Be the Last One Still Changing Its Clocks

BELLEVUE, Wash. — British Columbia stopped changing its clocks in March. Alberta stopped in May, and renamed its time zone "Alberta Time." Yukon quit in 2020. Saskatchewan never did it at all. The Northwest Territories is following Alberta, and Manitoba is polling its residents.

On Sunday, November 1, all of them will leave their clocks alone. Washington will set its clocks back an hour.

Canada is doing it. We can't.

Washington voted to end the clock change back in 2019. The law has never taken effect, because it only works if the US Congress approves permanent daylight time first, and seven years later it hasn't.

Four separate times since, someone in Olympia has introduced a bill to fix it here at home without waiting. Not one of those bills has ever come to a vote.

A new citizens' campaign, the Last Fall Back Act, would stop the clock changes now, using authority federal law already gives every state. Arizona and Hawaii have done exactly that for decades. If Congress ever approves permanent daylight time, Washington would switch to it automatically. The group behind the campaign, Last Fall Back Washington, registered as a state nonprofit this month.

The health research on the switch is well established. Heart attacks go up the Monday after we spring forward. So do car crashes, workplace injuries, and, in the week after we fall back, collisions with deer.

"It has never lost a vote. It has never been given one," said Scott Thurlow, founder of Last Fall Back Washington. "We're not asking anyone to change their mind, because most legislators already agree. We're asking them to hold the vote. The fastest way to make that happen is for people to tell their own legislators they want one, and it takes about two minutes."

The campaign is asking Washingtonians to contact their state legislators before bills are prefiled in December, and is recruiting volunteers ahead of a possible signature drive. If the 2027 session ends without action, organizers plan to file an Initiative to the Legislature, which would need roughly 386,000 signatures.

The campaign's site includes a tool for looking up and writing to your own legislators at lastfallback.org/take-action, along with the full text of the proposed act and answers to common objections.

About Last Fall Back Washington

Last Fall Back Washington is a volunteer-run Washington nonprofit corporation working to end the biannual clock change, through the Legislature if possible and a 2028 ballot initiative if not. It has no paid staff, no corporate funding, and no party affiliation, and is not a registered political committee.

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Notes for Reporters

Available on request: interviews, a one-page brief, and a dataset pairing published 2026-27 school bell times against U.S. Naval Observatory sunrise times across six Washington districts. It cuts against the "children in the dark" argument in some districts and supports it in others.

Sources and full link list: lastfallback.org/updates/western-canada-stopped-changing-clocks

• Alberta: alberta.ca/albertas-new-time-system
• British Columbia: www2.gov.bc.ca
• H.R. 139 House roll call #238: govtrack.us
• SHB 1196 (2019 c 297): app.leg.wa.gov
• 15 U.S.C. § 260a: law.cornell.edu