SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill Thursday that would give California voters the chance to tell lawmakers to move toward year-round daylight-saving time.

“Fiat lux!” the governor and UC Berkeley alumnus wrote in his signing message — quoting UC’s Latin motto, “Let there be light.”

Brown noted that AB807 by Assemblyman Kansen Chu, D-San Jose, would open the door for year-round savings time, “albeit through a circuitous path.”

Under the bill, the question of whether California should end the practice of setting clocks forward an hour in March and back in November will appear on the fall ballot. If voters approve it, the issue will go back to the Legislature, where lawmakers will decide whether the state should stay permanently on daylight-saving time.

Such a change would require a new bill and approval by two-thirds of both houses in the Legislature. Then the bill would have to be signed by the governor — not Brown, who leaves office in January. Keeping the clock permanently an hour ahead would also require congressional approval.

Alternatively, lawmakers could vote to join Hawaii and Arizona on standard year-round time, which would not require congressional approval. That switch is not popular with many people because it means less sunlight in the evening hours after they get off work.

Chu, who wants to keep the clocks fixed ahead an hour on daylight-saving time, said dropping the biannual time switch is not just about convenience. It’s about public health. A 2014 study in the journal Open Heart found the loss of an hour’s sleep as part of the switch to daylight-saving time raised the risk of heart attack by 25 percent. Other studies have found additional problems caused by changes in sleep patterns from the seasonal switch.

“Studies have shown that when we switch our clocks, that action alone increases the chances for heart attacks, workplace injuries, crime and traffic accidents,” Chu said in the bill’s analysis.

Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com