Selective Service Repeal Act Reintroduced In The Senate

The Selective Service Act is completely antithetical to the US Constitution and the very definition of liberty.  At least a few people understand that and have submitted the Selective Service Repeal Act in the US Senate to do away with it.

Antiwar has the story.

In the face of moves in Congress to ramp up U.S. readiness to activate a draft, Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) have reintroduced an alternative proposal to step back from the brink of mass military mobilization by repealing the Military Selective Service Act.

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In 2016, 2021, and again in 2022, Congress came close to approving legislation to expand the requirement to register with the Selective Service System for a possible military draft to include young women as well as young men. In 2024, that proposal is moving forward again in Congress as part of the annual National Defense [sic] Authorization Act (NDAA), along with a proposal to try to register all young people “automatically” for a possible draft.

The Selective Service Repeal Act, reintroduced this week in the Senate as S. 4881, would instead end draft registration entirely. This bill has been introduced several times before in Congress, starting in 2019, but has never gotten a hearing in either the House or the Senate.

Ending draft registration would put an end to the fantasy that the draft is always available as a “fallback” — a myth that enables planning for larger, longer, less popular wars without concern for whether people will volunteer to fight them.

Male U.S. citizens and residents are required to register with the Selective Service System when they turn 18, and notify Selective Service every time they change their address until their 26th birthday.

Draft boards have been appointed and trained throughout the U.S. The Selective Service System maintains contingency plans for a general “cannon fodder” draft of young men (based on the current list of registrants) and a separate Health Care Personnel Delivery System. Congress has ordered the Pentagon to conduct a comprehensive mobilization exercise including its readiness to activate a draft.

Few young men comply fully with the draft registration law. Most men who register for the draft do so only if and when it is required for some other government program, and almost nobody tells the Selective Service System when they move. Most draft notices would be returned as undeliverable. Even the former Director of the Selective Service System has testified that the current Selective Service database is so incomplete and inaccurate that it would be “less than useless” for an actual draft.

But the expansion of draft registration to women, and the new proposal to try to make it “automatic”, are bad ideas that won’t go away until Congress ends draft registration entirely.

In the 1980s, the government prosecuted a handful of vocal nonregistrants, including me, whose public statements could be used to prove that our nonregistration was “knowing and willful”. Those “show trials” proved counterproductive, showing other nonregistrants that there is safety in silence as well as safety in numbers. The government abandoned enforcement of the registration law in 1988.

In recent years, the failure of draft registration has become too obvious to ignore. In response, the Selective Service System has proposed that it be authorized to obtain any other Federal records that might identify or locate young people, and “automatically” sign all young people up for a future draft.

This is a recipe for a privacy-invasive fiasco. No Federal agency has up-to-date addresses for all U.S. citizens or residents, or the other information needed to determine who is eligible to be drafted. “automatic” draft registration would be expensive and would produce an incomplete, inaccurate list.

But without hearings or public scrutiny, this proposal by the Selective Service System for “automatic” draft registration has been included in the versions of the NDAA adopted by the House and under consideration in the Senate in 2024.

Congress should end draft registration entirely, rather than trying to extend it to women or make it “automatic”. The Selective Service Repeal Act would end preparations for a draft and restore the eligibility of men who didn’t register for the draft for government jobs, naturalized citizenship, and those Federal and state government programs from which they are currently excluded.

By preventing a draft, draft registration resisters are helping to protect us all against war. We can support them by asking our Representatives and Senators to support the Selective Service Repeal Act.

Ask your U.S. Senators to say “no” to attempts to expand or automate draft registration, and instead to support S. 4881 and the similar Senate floor amendment to the NDAA. Ask your U.S. Representative to reintroduce this bill in the House of Representatives. And urge House and Senate Armed Services Committee members to push for hearings on Selective Service repeal.

Edward Hasbrouck maintains the Resisters.info website and publishes the “Resistance News” newsletter. He was imprisoned in 1983-1984 for organizing resistance to draft registration.

Article posted with permission from Sons of Liberty Media