House and Senate Agree To Make Draft Registration ‘Automatic’

An amendment to the Military Selective Service Act to direct the Selective Service System (SSS) to try to register all potential draftees in the USA automatically has been included in the version of this year’s military authorization bill agreed to by a House-Senate conference committee and likely to be enacted into law within the next few weeks.

This doesn’t mean that a draft is being activated right away, or that any or all of those “automatically” registered will be sent induction orders – although preparing to do so is the sole purpose of registration with or by the SSS. This will, however, be the largest change in Selective Service law since 1980. More importantly, it will move the USA closer to activation of a draft, or at least to being able to claim to be ready to activate a draft “on demand” of Congress and the President, than at any time in the half century since draft registration was suspended and draft boards were deactivated in 1975.

The provision of the NDAA for automatic draft registration will take effect one year after the bill is signed into law. The clock will start running soon. We’ll only have a year to get the Military Selective Service Act repealed if we are to avert this new threat of both stepped-up preparations for a military draft and sweeping abuse of young Americans’ personal information.