What is the Selective Service System?

Presentation by the U.S. Army to the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service including contingency plans for a draft (redacted version released in response to my FOIA requests)

• What is the Selective Service System and how would a draft work?
  • FAQ about the Selective Service System and the military draft (PDF)
  • Preguntas frecuentes sobre el Sistema de Servicio Selectivo y la conscripción (servicio militar obligatorio) (PDF)
  • Flowcharts of Selective Service process, decision points, and options
  • Podcast: What is the Selective Service System and how would a draft work? (30 min. mp3)
  • Health care workers and the “Health Care Personnel Delivery System”
  • Advice about Selective Service registration
  • FAQ about Selective Service registration compliance and enforcement
  • Prosecutions of draft registration resisters, 1982-1986
  • History of draft registration, draft resistance, and and the Selective Service System since 1980


• Selective Service System plans and preparations for different categories of draftees:
  • SSS contingency plans for a general draft
  • SSS contingency plans for a draft of health care workers
  • SSS contingency plans to expand draft registration to women
  • SSS procedures for alternative service work by conscientious objectors and memoranda of understanding with potential employers of alternative service workers
  • SSS state legislative lobbying program
  • SSS presentation to the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service
  • U.S. Army briefing to the NCMNPS on the role of the SSS and the draft
  • December 2020 speech by the Director of the SSS on plans and priorities
  • 1980 Proclamation by President Carter ordering young men to register (still in effect until revised, replaced, or rescinded)
  • Military Selective Service Act, Title 50 U.S. Code, Chapter 49, Sections 3801-2820 (Note that these sections of the U.S. Code were formerly included 50 U.S.C., Appendix, all of which has been has been recodified and renumbered. Almost all references to the MSSA in case law and commentaries cite the former sections of 50 U.S.C. App., not the current sections of 50 U.S.C. Chapter 49.)

  The Selective Service System (SSS) is a an “independent” Federal agency that exists to plan, prepare, and train staff and volunteers to operate and administer a military draft whenever Congress and the President decide to order it, and to maintain a database of names and addresses of draft-age men to be used to send out induction notices ordering them into the military in the event of a draft.

  The Selective Service System carries out contingency planning and preparations for two types of draft: a general draft based on registration lists of men aged 18-25, and a special-skills draft based on professional licensing lists of workers (men and women up to age 44) in specified health care occupations. In the event of either type of draft, the Selective Service System would send out induction notices, adjudicate claims for deferments or exemptions, and assign draftees classified as conscientious objectors to alternative service work.

  Draft registration ceased entirely from 1975 to 1980, and the Selective Service System was cut back to “deep standby” status with only minimal headquarters staff and no local draft boards. But since 1980, all male US citizens and most other male U.S. residents have been required to register with the Selective Service System within 30 days of their 18th birthday, and notify the Selective Service System each time they change their residence until their 26th birthday (although few comply with these requirements).

  Today the Selective Service System includes:

  • National staff who administer draft registration, contingency planning, and recruitment and training of local draft boards;
  • Volunteer Selective Service directors for each state, volunteer local draft boards in every county, district and state appeal boards, and a national appeal board, largely recruited through organizations of military veterans, who would judge claims for exemption in the event of a draft, such as requests by draftees to be classified as conscientious objectors and allowed to perform non-combatant or alternative non-military “service”; and
  • Volunteer high school administrators and prison officials deputized as “registrars” to get young men in their institutions to sign up for the draft.

  In the past, the Selective Service System routinely released the names of local draft board members (although not their addresses or any other information) in response to Freedom Of Information Act requests. Steve Homer wrote about this in “Know Your Draft Board”, in Resistance News #20, p. 1. Local activists and journalists from the alternative press used this information to expose and question draft board members and raise consciousness about the existence of draft boards in every county, trained and prepared to administer a draft. However, the last time we requested this information, the SSS “categorically” refused to disclose the names or any other information about local, state, or national boards. So there is no way to know who the people are who would be judging applications for conscientious objector status or other deferments or exemptions.

  The Selective Service System maintains contingency plans for a general “cannon fodder” draft of young men (based on the current list of male registrants between 18 and 26) and/or a separate Health Care Personnel Delivery System, like the “doctor draft” during some previous U.S. wars, of men and women up to age 44 in 57 medical and related occupations — not just doctors and nurses but physical therapists, veterinary technicians, etc.— based on professional licensing lists. These plans could be activated at any time that Congress decides to reinstate either or both forms of a draft.

  Most of those worried about their vulnerability to a draft are young men and their friends and loved ones. But health care workers — men and women of all ages — are at much more imminent risk of a draft. According to one military doctor, writing in a 2004 medical journal article explaining Selective Service plans: “A physician draft is the most likely conscription into the military in the near future.” In 2004, a Selective Service spokesperson said, “Talking to the manpower folks at the Department of Defense and others, what came up was that … they thought that if we have any kind of a draft, it will probably be a special skills draft.” More recently, in 2016 Congress directed the National Commission on Military, National, and Military Service — which was created primarily to study whether to expand registration for a general draft to young women as well as young men — to also study whether to activate the Health Care Personnel Delivery System or use it as a model for contingency planning for a “special-skills” draft for a wider range of occupations such as individual with cyber or foreign language skills.

  So the more immediate issue may not be how soon the military might run short of cannon fodder, but how soon they might run short of doctors, nurses, and 57 other occupational categories of health care workers. The Selective Service plans for a Health Care Workers Personnel Delivery System (HCPDS) are quite different than those for a general draft, and could be implemented much more quickly than a general draft: health care workers would be presumed already to be qualified, eliminating the need for pre-induction physicals or other screening. Selective Service says that the HCPDS would, “Require minimal training for HCPDS draftees, because they are already skilled personnel.”

  The Selective Service System told the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service that the SSS is “prepared” to register young women as well as young men, if Congress and the President orders the expansion of draft registration to women. But as I pointed out in my testimony to the NCMNPS, neither the Selective service System nor the Department of Justice has any plans, preparations, or budget to enforce the current or any expanded registration requirement, to force women to register, or to prosecute those who don;t.

  The Selective Service System is not a law enforcement agency and has no police or prosecutorial authority. Enforcement of the Military Selective Service Act is up to the Department of Justice. Each year, the SSS refers several hundred thousand names of suspected nonregistrants to the Department Of Justice. Twenty of those deemed the “most vocal” nonregistrants were prosecuted in the 1980s. But the prosecutions served to publicize the resistance and the government’s inability to prosecute most violators, especially those who kept quiet. Compliance declined even further in response to the show trials of selected nonregistrants. Since 1988, the Department of Justice has declined to investigate or prosecute any of the millions of possible nonregistrants whose names have been referred to the DOJ by the SSS.