I was reading a story on Fox News earlier about a tweet that was sent out by the Selective Sevice stating that anyone who was born male, even if they have transitioned to female, must register for the draft. That got me thinking about the rate of compliance for draft registration, and a quick google search yielded this:
https://hasbrouck.org/draft/compliance.html
https://hasbrouck.org/draft/compliance.html
The Selective Service System (SSS) claims that “compliance” with the draft registration law exceeds 90 percent. But what does that really mean? It turns out that the “compliance” reported by the SSS is the ratio of registrations on file to men of registration age (between their 18th and 26th birthdays). In other words, the SSS counts as “in compliance” everyone of registration age who has ever registered, even if they registered years late — after the age of prime eligibility for the draft, if there were to be a draft — and regardless of whether the address in the SSS database is current or was ever accurate.
The only purpose for the Selective Service System registration list is to deliver induction notices in the event of a draft. The only proper measure of compliance is, “For what percentage of would-be draftees does the SSS have a valid current postal mailing address, such that the government could prove to a Federal criminal jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, that an induction notice sent to that address was received by the intended recipient?” Although the SSS deliberately avoids researching this question, the spot data they occasionally release for this more relevant “compliance rate” is far too low for a draft to be politically salable, or enforceable: