1) Contact and talk with a counselor at the Center on Conscience and War. I've worked with them and know some of them personally. It's unlikely you'll find any source as knowledgeable about the draft and the mechanics of applying for conscientious objection in case of draft. And it's FREE.
2) If you find the help you receive from CCW relevant and helpful then send them a donation. Draft counseling organizations need all the help they can get. The amount you donate does not matter. Give what you can afford as often as you can afford it.
3) Maintain a portfolio of EVERYTHING you do/write/participate in which shows your belief in not wanting to participate in war, such as; receipts from donations to CCW, brochures from any meetings/rallies/protests you've attended, lists of books/articles you've read that validate your beliefs, copies of this discussion thread....anything that shows the progression of your beliefs.
4) There is no ONE thing that will sway your draft board should you find yourself in front of one. Odds are the 5 or so members will be filled with the same amount of skepticism and, even, contempt that you're confronting in this thread of discussion. You're asking the right questions. The draft board decision will be entirely subjective and will award CO status based on THEIR belief that you are sincere about YOUR belief and that you somehow show evidence that you've lived a life reflecting those beliefs.
Moral beliefs do not spring up fully formed out of nowhere. What you come to believe about YOUR participation in war is a journey that requires ongoing study and rigorous self examination. I was given an honorable discharge as a conscientious objector after 5 years of military service. I've assisted hundreds of military men and women through the CO process. You are on the right track.
Watch the documentary SOLDIERS OF CONSCIENCE. It may help in formulating your beliefs. It is available entirely on line or thru NetFlix.
Suppose that you believe larger scale wars than current US military campaigns are looming in the next decade or two (this may be highly improbable, but let's condition on it for the moment). If you thought further that a military draft or other forms of conscription might be used, and you wanted to avoid military service if that situation arose, what steps should you take now to give yourself a high likelihood of being declared a conscientious objector?
I don't have numbers to back any of this up, but I am in the process of compiling them. My general thought is to break down the problem like so: Pr(serious injury or death | conscription) * Pr(conscription | my conscientious objector behavior & geopolitical conditions ripe for war) * Pr(geopolitical conditions ripe for war), assuming some conscientious objector behavior (or mixture distribution over several behaviors).
If I feel that Pr(serious injury or death | conscription) and Pr(geopolitical conditions ripe for war) are sufficiently high, then I might be motivated to pay some costs in order to drive Pr(conscription | my conscientious objector behavior) very low.
There's a funny bit in the American version of the show The Office where the manager, Michael, is concerned about his large credit card debt. The accountant, Oscar, mentions that declaring bankruptcy is an option, and so Michael walks out into the main office area and yells, "I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!"
In a similar vein, I don't think that draft boards will accept the "excuse" that a given person has "merely" frequently expressed pacifist views. So if someone wants to robustly signal that she or he is a conscientious objector, what to do? In my ~30 minutes of searching, I've found a few organizations that, on first glance, look worthy of further investigation and perhaps regular donations.
Here are the few I've focused on most:
Center on Conscience and War
Coffee Strong
War-Resister's International
The problems I'm thinking about along these lines include:
I'm curious if others have thought about this. Good literature references are welcome. My plan is to compile statistics that let me make reasonable estimates of the different conditional probabilities.
Addendum
Several people seem very concerned with the signal faker aspect of this question. I don't understand the preoccupation with this and feel tired of trying to justify the question to people who only care about the signal faker aspect. So I'll just add this copy of one of my comments from below. Hopefully this gives some additional perspective, though I don't expect it to change anyone's mind. I still stand by the post as-is: it's asking about a conditional question based on sincere belief. Even if the answer would be of interest to fakers too, that alone doesn't make that explanation more likely and even if that explanation was more likely it doesn't make the question unworthy of thoughtful answers.
Here's the promised comment:
Stated another way: