University of Virginia Library

How New Draft System Will Operate

Ed.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 A chance
drawing tomorrow night will determine
which young men of hundreds of
thousands will be drafted into military
service and which, by luck of birthday,
will be left free to work, study and lead
uninterrupted civilian lives.

When the lottery is completed late
tomorrow night, every man between the
ages of 19 and 26 will have a general,
though not precise, idea of whether or
not he will be drafted.

On a table at the front of the room
will sit a cylindrical glass bowl - looking
something like a water-cooler -
containing 366 capsules. In each capsule will be
a piece of sticky paper with a date written on
it.

As the capsules are drawn, the dates will be
removed and posted on a board in the order in
which they are picked next to a series of
numbers ranging from 1 to 366. Potential
draftees will be chosen, starting in January, in
the order in which their birthdays were drawn.

An Example

As an example, if the first date drawn is
March 20, every man between 19 and 26 whose
birthday is March 20 will be given No. 1, and
each draft board will choose all men with No. 1
(who are not deferred or exempt from the
draft) before it chooses a man with No. 2.

Administration officials my that, as a
general rule for the first lottery, men drawing
the lowest third of the numbers - roughly 1
through 122 - can be certain that they will be
drafted. Men drawing the highest third of the
numbers - roughly 244 through 366 - can be
assured that they will be passed by. For those
in the middle, there will be a year of
uncertainty.

In addition to the drawing of the 366 dates,
the 26 letters of the alphabet will be chosen at
random to determine the order of call within a
given birthday.

The lottery does not affect deferments or
exemptions at all. A man who now has a
deferment because he is a student, because he
has a critical occupation, or whatever can
retain his deferment. But he will be assigned a
number in tomorrow's lottery, and the number
he gets will slay with him. When his deferment
lapses, his draft board will be required to select
him before it takes a man with a higher
number.

Next fall, the birthdays will be reshuffled,
and there will be another lottery for 1971.
Next year's drawing will affect only men whose
19th birthday is in 1970 in other words, only
men born in 1951.

From 1944 to 1950

Tomorrow's lottery affects every man born
between Jan. 1, 1944, and Dec. 31, 1950. The
Government estimates there are 850,000 of
these men who are not deferred or exempt
from the draft. About 250,000 will be drafted
next year. The rest will be free from the draft
forever, unless there is a national emergency, or
if the law is changed to affect them, which is
unlikely.

To show how deferments work under the
lottery system, take, for example, the case of
John Doc, a college undergraduate with a
student deferment and Sept. 12 as a birthday.

The 100th Man

If Sept. 12 is the 100th number drawn
tomorrow night, John Doc will be assigned No.
100. As long as he retains his deferment - it
cannot be done past the age of 24 under the
current law affecting student deferments - he
will not be drafted, even though all eligible men
with No. 100 are taken.

Men in future lotteries with Sept. 12 as a
birthday will be assigned another number,
maybe higher or maybe lower than 100. But
this makes no difference to John Doc He will
always have No. 100, and, in whichever year his
deferment lapses, he will be considered with all
other men with No. 100.

If John Doc loses his deferment in the
middle of the year, it still makes no difference.
for in the next draft call after he loses the
deferment, his draft board will take him if No.
100 has been reached or passed and not draft
him if No. 100 has not been reached in the
sequences.

It will still be possible, however, for a man
to keep a job deferment many young men
receive them for teaching until his 26th
birthday and avoid the draft entirely.

If the lottery system of chance seems unfair.
it is generally agreed that the random system is
more equitable than the old system. Its primary
advantage is that it limits to one year the period
in which a person is liable to be drafted and it
makes that year the one in which his 20th
birthday occurs, a time when most men are not
set in their careers. If a person wishes, through
deferments, to shift his year of liability to a
later year, it is by his own choice.

Under the old method, men were susceptible
to the draft up to the age of 26, with the oldest
men drafted first. Since, in theory, every man
at some point became the oldest 25-year-old,
every man without a deferment or an
exemption was likely to be drafted. Frequently,
he was not called until he approached his 26th
birthday, a time when his career could be
seriously interrupted. And the period of
uncertainty lasted for seven years, from his
19th birthday to his 26th.