Historic Information of the Day ....

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On December 1, 1969, the Selective Service System of the United States conducted two lotteries to determine the order of call to military service in the Vietnam War for men born from 1944 to 1950. These lotteries occurred during "the draft" — a period of conscription, controlled by the President, from just before World War II to 1973.


The lottery numbers assigned in December 1969 were used during calendar year 1970 both to call for induction and to call for physical examination, a preliminary call covering more men.
The days of the year (including February 29) were represented by the numbers 1 through 366 written on slips of paper. The slips were placed in separate plastic capsules that were mixed in a shoebox and then dumped into a deep glass jar. Capsules were drawn from the jar one at a time.


The first number drawn was 258 (September 14), so all registrants with that birthday were assigned lottery number 1. The second number drawn corresponded to April 24, and so forth. All men of draft age (born 1944 to 1950) who shared a birthdate would be called to serve at once. The first 195 birthdates drawn were later called to serve in the order they were drawn; the last of these was September 24.


Also on December 1, 1969, a second lottery was held, with the 26 letters of the alphabet. Among men with the same birthdate, the order of induction was determined by the permutation ranks of the first letters of their last, first, and middle names. Anyone with initials "JJJ" would have been first within the shared birthdate; anyone with initials "VVV" would have been last.


People soon noticed that the lottery numbers were not distributed uniformly over the year. In particular, November and December births, or dates 306 to 366, were assigned mainly to lower draft numbers representing earlier calls to serve.


This led to complaints that the lottery was not random as the legislation required. Analysis of the procedure suggested that mixing 366 capsules in the shoe box did not mix them sufficiently before dumping them into the jar. ("The capsules were put in a box month by month, January through December, and subsequent mixing efforts were insufficient to overcome this sequencing.") However, the non-uniform lottery was allowed to stand.


The draft lottery had social and economic consequences because it generated resistance to military service and the resisters, draft evaders or "draft dodgers", were generally young, well educated, healthy men. Some chose the legal sanctions for refusing military service, such as imprisonment, either showing their disapproval by burning their draft cards or draft letters, or simply not presenting themselves for the military service test.


Others left the country, commonly moving to Canada. The number of American citizens who moved to Canada during the Vietnam war because of the draft is estimated to be around 125,000; it is believed that about half returned to the United States after the Nixon era (when the war was also over)


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