the Mormon missionary deferment was reserved for only a very select few Mormons and no records exist as to how and why Mitt Romney got his. If he had ran to Canada, he would have been a draft dodger but he ran to France and was called a minister instead. America’s favorite fortunate son.
The deferments for Mormon missionaries became increasingly controversial in the late 1960s, especially in Utah, leading the Mormon Church and the government to limit the number of church missionaries who could put off their military service. That agreement called for each church ward, or church district, to designate one male every six months to be exempted from potential duty for the duration of his missionary work.
Romney's home state was Michigan, making his 4-D exemption as a missionary all but automatic because of the relatively small number of Mormon missionaries from that state. It might have been more difficult in Utah, where the huge Mormon population meant that there were sometimes more missionaries than available exemptions. Most missions lasted two and a half years, as Romney's did.
Barry Mayo, who was counselor to the bishop of the ward in Pontiac, Michigan, where Romney attended church, recalled in an interview that wards were allowed to exempt one missionary every six months from the draft. He said that he could not recall any time in which more than one potential draftee sought an exemption in the ward in a six-month period, so Romney's deferment was never in doubt.
Mayo said no records are available from the period that would show how Romney's deferment was handled. But he said he recalled "the conclusion was `we really don't have to worry about [exceeding the quota] because we were never in that situation.' "
Neither patriotism nor the draft has ever snagged a Romney man, they have a perfect, unbroken, 170 record.