Draft Lottery (1969) - Method

Method

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 (see figure). 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. Only five days in December--Dec. 2, 12, 15, 17 and 19--were higher than the last call number of 195.

Draft lotteries were conducted again in 1970 (for those born in 1951) and 1971 to 1975 (for 1952 to 1956 births). The draft numbers issued in 1972 were never used to call for induction into service, because the last call was December 7 and authority to induct expired June 30, 1973. The 1972 to 1975 lottery numbers were used to call some men born 1953 to 1956 for physical exams and the highest number called for a physical was 215 (for tables 1970 through 1976).