What was the 1969 draft lottery process and how were numbers assigned?
This fact-check may be outdated. Consider refreshing it to get the most current information.
Executive summary
The Selective Service held a birth-date lottery on December 1, 1969, drawing 366 capsules — one for each calendar date including February 29 — to assign an “order of call” number to every man born 1944–1950; the first date drawn (September 14) was assigned lottery number 1 and the process continued until every date had a number [1] [2] [3]. The result determined who would be called in 1970 (those with numbers 1–195 were actually inducted), but statisticians and later analyses concluded the procedure produced a non‑uniform distribution — late‑year birthdays ended up with disproportionately low (early‑call) numbers, raising concerns about insufficient mixing [4] [3] [5].
1. How the 1969 lottery was physically executed
Officials prepared 366 slips for each possible calendar date (including Feb. 29), placed them inside blue plastic capsules, and mixed those capsules in a large glass container; on national television a Selective Service official and invited guests drew capsules one by one and assigned sequence numbers in the order drawn — September 14 was drawn first and became #1, April 24 was #2, and so on until every date had a number [3] [4] [6].
2. What those numbers meant — the order of call
The lottery numbers determined the order in which men were eligible to be drafted in calendar year 1970: lower numbers meant earlier call to report for possible induction. In practice, the Selective Service called men assigned numbers up through 195 from the 1969 table; men with higher numbers were not ordered to serve for that call year [1] [4].
3. Why the lottery was created — policy and politics
Congress and the Nixon administration moved to a random lottery system to address perceived inequities in the previous “oldest first” system and public outrage over socioeconomic and racial disparities in who was being drafted; Nixon signed authority for a lottery as part of broader changes in late November 1969 and the draw followed on Dec. 1 [7] [8] [1].
4. Immediate controversy: Was the draw truly random?
Within weeks statisticians noted patterns inconsistent with uniform randomness: birthdays later in the calendar year tended to receive lower (earlier) draft numbers, suggesting clustering that advantaged or disadvantaged certain cohorts. Critics argued the capsules had not been sufficiently mixed; Selective Service officials denied deliberate bias, but subsequent statistical work found the permutation unlikely to come from a fair random process [4] [3] [5].
5. Evidence and analytical follow‑ups
Researchers modeled the draw as a classical “ball and urn” experiment and ran permutation tests and simulations; one analysis showed only about a 1.2% chance that the observed monthly rank deviations would occur under a fair random assignment — supporting the claim the mixing or methodology produced systematic departures from randomness [4] [5] [3].
6. Practical consequences for registrants and public opinion
Approximately 850,000 men were affected by the lottery’s table for 1944–1950 births; because the highest number actually called that year was 195, people born on particular dates found themselves suddenly much more or much less likely to be inducted, which intensified protests and public resentment of the draft and the war [9] [6] [10].
7. Official record and subsequent lotteries
The Selective Service preserved tables mapping each date to its lottery number; later lotteries (1970–1972) used similar procedures but the 1969 draw remains the best‑known and most scrutinized because of its statistical anomalies and political impact. The administration did not change the 1969 result despite the controversy, and courts ultimately did not overturn the process [1] [11] [4].
Limitations and remaining questions
Available sources document the physical method (capsules, glass jar, sequential drawing) and the statistical criticisms, but they do not provide a full contemporaneous log of mixing procedures, who exactly mixed the capsules, or detailed transcripts of every mixing motion — those operational details are not found in current reporting [4] [3]. Different accounts emphasize either procedural fairness or procedural failures; readers should weigh the government’s stated methods [1] against independent statistical reconstructions [4] [5].
Bottom line
The 1969 draft lottery assigned every birth date a draft position by drawing 366 capsules in sequence, producing a public and legally binding “order of call” for 1970; independent statistical work shows the procedure produced non‑random patterns that advantaged late‑year birthdays, and that discrepancy fuels the enduring controversy over whether the draw achieved its goal of equity [2] [1] [4].