Draft evasion in the Vietnam War was a common practice in the United States and Australia during the conflict. Significant draft avoidance was taking place even before the United States became heavily involved in the Vietnam War. The large cohort of Baby Boomers and late Silent Generationers allowed for a steep increase in the number of exemptions and deferments, especially for college and graduate students. More than half of the 27 million men eligible for the draft during the Vietnam War were deferred, exempted or disqualified.

Evasion in Australia

Australia reintroduced compulsory military training via the National Service Act 1964, with conscripted soldiers deployed to Vietnam by the Holt government from 1966. From 1966 to 1968 a growing force of conscientious objectors grew in Australia and by 1967 became openly popular due to a growing protest movement. Information campaigns were carried out by organizations like Students for a Democratic Society and Save Our Sons to spread information on how to avoid the draft.

Young men who were subject to the conscription lottery also formed their own anti-conscription organisation, the Youth Campaign Against Conscription. It was the YCAC that imported the concept of draft-card burning from the United States and ushered in a new form of resistance to conscription, active non-compliance. Instead of merely not registering (passive non-compliance with the National Service Scheme), the young conscripts actively demonstrated their distaste for the government's actions by destroying their registration cards.

Conscription ended in December 1972, and the remaining seven men in Australian prisons for refusing conscription were freed in mid-to-late December 1972. 63,735 national servicemen served in the Army, of whom 15,381 were deployed to Vietnam. Approximately 200 were killed.

Evasion in the United States Penalties and rate of prosecution A distinction is made between draft evaders and draft resisters. There were millions of men who avoided the draft, and many thousands who openly resisted the conscription system and actively opposed the war.Cortright (2005), cited above, p. 164. The head of U.S. President Richard Nixon's task force on the all-volunteer military reported in 1970 that the number of resisters was "expanding at an alarming rate" and that the government was "almost powerless to apprehend and prosecute them".Cortright (2005), cited above, p. 165 (quoting task force chair Martin Anderson). It is now known that, during the Vietnam era, approximately 570,000 young men were classified as draft offenders, and approximately 210,000 were formally accused of draft violations; however, only 8,750 were convicted and only 3,250 were jailed. Some draft eligible men publicly burned their draft cards, but the Justice Department brought charges against only 50, of whom 40 were convicted.Baskir and Strauss (1987), cited above.

Enlisting to evade As U.S. troop strength in Vietnam increased, some young men sought to evade the draft by preemptively enlisting in military forces that were unlikely to see combat in Vietnam, such as the Coast Guard,Baskir and Strauss, cited above, p. 54. though Coast Guardsmen had to maintain readiness for combat in Vietnam,Baskir and Strauss, cited above, p. 14. and some Coast Guardsmen eventually served and were killed there. Similarly, the Vietnam-era National Guard was seen by some as an avenue for avoiding combat in Vietnam,Baskir and Strauss, cited above, p. 51 although that too was less than foolproof: about 15,000 National Guardsmen were sent to Vietnam before the war began winding down.

Evasion counseling Other young men sought to evade the draft by avoiding or resisting any military commitment. In this they were bolstered by certain countercultural figures. "Draft Dodger Rag", a 1965 song by Phil Ochs, circumvented laws against counseling evasion by employing satire to provide a how-to list of available deferments: ruptured spleen, poor eyesight, flat feet, asthma, and many more.Ochs, Phil (1965). " Draft Dodger Rag". Lyrics. Genius website. Retrieved 12 October 2018. Folksinger Arlo Guthrie lampooned the paradox of seeking a deferment by acting crazy in his song "Alice's Restaurant": "I said, 'I wanna kill! Kill! Eat dead burnt bodies!' and the Sergeant said, 'You're our boy'!"Guthrie, Arlo (1967). "Alice's Restaurant Massacre". Lyrics. Genius website. Retrieved 17 January 2018. The book 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft was co-authored by Tuli Kupferberg, a member of the band The Fugs. It espoused such methods as arriving at the draft board in diapers.Kupferberg, Tuli; Bashlow, Robert (1968). 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft. New York: Oliver Layton Press. Originally New York: Grove Press, 1967. The book focuses on the United States in the 1960s. Neither edition has an ISBN. Another text pertinent to draft-age men was Jules Feiffer's cartoon novella from the 1950s, Munro, later a short film, in which a four-year-old boy is drafted by mistake.Feiffer, Jules (1989). The Collected Works, Volume II: Munro. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books. .

Draft counseling groups were another source of support for potential draft evaders. Many such groups were active during the war. Some were connected to national groups, such as the American Friends Service Committee and Students for a Democratic Society; others were ad hoc campus or community groups.Satin, Mark (2017, orig. 1968). Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada. Toronto: House of Anansi Press "A List" reprint ed., Chap. 24 (listing the names ad addresses of 100 U.S. anti-draft groups from 38 states as of January 1968). . Many specially trained individuals worked as counselors for such groups.Tatum, Arlo, ed. (October 1968, orig. 1952). Handbook for Conscientious Objectors. Philadelphia: Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, 10th ed., p. 6. Booklet of 100 pages, no ISBN.

Public resistance

Alongside the draft counseling groups, a substantial draft resistance movement emerged.Foley (2003), cited above, Introduction and Chaps. 1–6. Although draft resistance is sometimes discussed as a form of "draft evasion", draft resisters and scholars of draft resistance reject the categorization of resistance as a form of evasion or avoidance. Draft resisters argue that they seek to confront, not evade or avoid, the draft.Foley (2003), cited above, p. 7, "The blurring of this distinction annoys former draft resisters who today find themselves stressing the difference whenever they talk about it." Students for a Democratic Society sought to play a major role in it,Sale, Kirkpatrick (1973). SDS. New York: Vintage Books / Random House, "Resistance 1965-1968" section, pp. 311–316. . as did the War Resisters League, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's "National Black Anti-War Anti-Draft Union"Carson, Clayborne (1981). In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 271. . and other groups. Many say that the draft resistance movement was spearheaded by an organization called The Resistance.Foley, 2003, cited above.Ferber, Michael; Lynd, Staughton (1971). The Resistance. Boston: Beacon Press. . It was founded by David Harris and others in the San Francisco Bay Area in March 1967, and quickly spread nationally.Ashbolt, Anthony (2013). A Cultural History of the Radical Sixties in the San Francisco Bay Area. New York: Routledge, pp. 127–128. . The insignia of the organization was the Greek letter omega, Ω, the symbol for ohms—the unit of electrical resistance. Some members of The Resistance publicly burned their draft cards or refused to register for the draft. Other members deposited their cards into boxes on selected dates and then mailed them to the government. They were then drafted, refused to be inducted, and fought their cases in the federal courts. These draft resisters hoped that their public civil disobedience would help to bring the war and the draft to an end. Many young men went to federal prison as part of this movement. According to Cortright, the draft resistance movement was the leading edge of the anti-war movement in 1967 and 1968.

301 Draft Resistance groups have been identified by the Mapping American Social Movements Project. By far the largest number were in California where they spread up and down the state in college towns and big cities from Chico to San Diego. The eastern college corridor from Boston to Baltimore was also active as were campuses and cities in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

After the war, some of the draft resisters who stayed in the U.S. wrote memoirs. These included David Harris's Dreams Die Hard (1982),Klein, Joe (13 June 1982). " A Protégé's Story". The New York Times Book Review, p. 3. Retrieved 2 February 2018. David Miller's I Didn't Know God Made Honky Tonk Communists (2001),Friedman, Sari (1 February 2002). " Stranger than Fiction". Berkeley Daily Planet, p. 1. Retrieved 2 February 2018. Jerry Elmer's Felon for Peace (2005),Kehler, Randy (September 2005). "Felon for Peace: The Memoir of a Vietnam-Era Draft Resister". Fellowship, vol. 71, no. 9–10, p. 27. A publication of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. and Bruce Dancis's Resister (2014).Joseph, Paul (April 2015). "Resister: A Story of Peace and Prison During the Vietnam War". Peace & Change, vol. 40, issue no. 2, pp. 272–276. A joint publication of the Peace History Society and the Peace and Justice Studies Association.Polner, Murray (18 May 2014). "Review of Bruce Dancis's 'Resister'". History News Network, an electronic platform at George Washington University. Retrieved 2 February 2018. Harris was an anti-draft organizer who went to jail for his beliefs (and was briefly married to folk singer Joan Baez), Miller was the first Vietnam War refuser to publicly burn his draft card (and later became partner to spiritual teacher Starhawk), Elmer refused to register for the draft and destroyed draft board files in several locations, and Dancis led the largest chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (the one at Cornell University) before being jailed for publicly shredding his draft card and returning it to his draft board. Harris in particular expresses serious second thoughts about aspects of the movement he was part of.

American emigration to Canada and elsewhere

Popularity The number of U.S. draft evaders who went to Canada was a fraction of those who resisted the Vietnam War.Squires, Jessica (2013). Building Sanctuary: The Movement to Support Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, 1965–73. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, p. 174. . According to a 1978 book by former members of President Gerald Ford's Clemency Board, 210,000 Americans were accused of draft offenses and 30,000 left the country.Baskir and Strauss (1978), cited above, p. 169. A recent estimate is that 60,000 to 100,000 left the U.S., mainly for Canada or Sweden.Cortright, David (2008). Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 164–165. . Others scattered elsewhere; Mexico,Kusch (2001), cited above, p. 26. Britain,Wittmann, Anna M. (2016). Talking Conflict: The Loaded Language of Genocide, Political Violence, Terrorism, and Warfatre. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, pp. 115–116 ("Draft Dodgers" entry). . and at least one draft evader sympathized with Mao Zedong's China and found refuge there.Wong, Jan (1997). Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now. New York: Anchor Books, pp. 154–155. . Draft evader Ken Kiask spent eight years traveling continuously across the Global South before returning to the U.S.Kiask, Ken (2015). Draft-Dodging Odyssey. Seattle, WA: CreateSpace / Amazon. .