The Draft for the Armed Services: how likely it was and who got drafted the most, plus draft dodgers or those who fled or avoided service - Zeb Lucas

The drawing of capsules by the Selective Service System

On December 1, 1969 the Selective Service drew 366 capsules from a bowl that had every possible birth date for eligible men to be drafted for the U.S. Armed Forces. Each capsule drawn was then numbered; the smaller your number was, the more likely that you would be drafted. The majority of people that served as a result of the draft were from poor and working class families, who were unaware of the possible ways to avoid being drafted. Some of the ways in which one could avoid the draft were things such as one’s marital status, whether you had a family to provide for, if you were enrolled in college, whether you had a job that supported the war effort, if your religious beliefs were opposed to war, or if you had a physical condition that would not allow you to serve. Many that were drafted fled to Canada in order to avoid being inducted into the U.S. Military. The amount of people that avoided the draft was so high that it was impossible to prosecute every single person. As a result, President Carter passed the general amnesty act on January 21, 1977 that essentially wiped anyone’s record clean that had violated the Military Selective Service Act between August 4, 1964, and March 28, 1973, by fleeing the country, or never filling out a draft card. However this only applied to civilians, and did not apply to the estimated 500,000 to 1 million active duty military personnel that went AWOL, or deserted during the war. This was a very controversial topic because many believed that the general amnesty act should include military personnel, although that never happened. 

http://www.wayzata.k12.mn.us/cms/lib/MN01001540/Centricity/Domain/953/The%20Vietnam%20War%20and%20the%20Draft%20Reading.pdf