University of Virginia Library

Draft Reform

Reprinted with permission of the New York Times.

The draft lottery legislation approved by
the House last week is, as the Senate majority
leadership pointed out, only a partial step
toward needed Selective Service reform. Both
Houses of Congress have been delinquent this
year in failing to enact sweeping changes in a
system that was described by a Federal judge
in New York recently as a "mind-numbing
maze of statutes, regulations and memorandum
...inscrutable not only to laymen but also to
most lawyers."

But the need for more comprehensive
reform than the President has proposed or the
House has seen fit to consider does not excuse
the Senate from acting now on the limited
improvement in draft procedures that could
still be achieved during the current session.
Promises of a major Selective Service overhaul
next year would be more credible if the
Senate followed up the House vote this year
to institute a random selection system. Some
reform is better than none.