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In late 2015 and early 2016, multiple news articles and social media posts claimed presidential candidate Bernie Sanders had dodged the draft during the Vietnam War era: It's true that Sanders was a consistently vocal opponent of the Vietnam war during his college years and into his early political career, applying for conscientious objector status as a student. However, the term draft dodger has a very specific definition and connotation (that compulsory military service was evaded by illegal or unethical means, such as falsifying documents or leaving the country) which doesn't apply to conscientious objectors. Memes saying that Sanders evaded the draft seem to have originated from an editorial published by the Des Moines Register in August 2015: In a followup column, the writer noted that Sanders addressed the original piece at length during discussion with the paper's editorial board, incorrectly referring to his behavior as draft dodging, and quoting Sanders' partial reply: An ABC News article about Sanders and the draft reported that Sanders' campaign confirmed his application for status as a conscientious objector, noting that his anti-war stance in the 1960s was a well-known matter of record: The topic of Sanders and Vietnam came up again during the 13 October 2015 Democratic debate. Moderator Anderson Cooper asked Sanders: Predictably, the bulk of reporting on Sanders' so-called draft dodging was published after the senator announced his plans to run for president. However, an archived Army Times article provided a detail missing from nearly all the coverage: So while it was true that Sanders sought conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War draft, that cannot in any way be conflated with the specific meaning of the term draft-dodging. Further, Sanders was eligible for student deferments until at least 1964, when he graduated from the University of Chicago. By the time his number came up, Sanders was too old to be drafted.
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