It’s really a question of scale. You don’t make the majority of your draftees political draftees. Imagine if only one in twenty soldiers is drafted due to their political activities. You’re not trying to draft every single person in the country that would want to vote against you. Rather, you draft people who start up resistance movements or alternative political parties. You don’t draft everyone who attends the protest. But you do draft all the protest leaders. You start with the most prominent and go down the line until you’ve filled up as many of your political drafts as you feel comfortable.

It can be a very useful tool for a despot to target their political opposition. And it also has a silencing effect. It won’t take long for people to notice and to prove that the draft board is politically biased. But then the courts OK it for some bullshit reason. Now you live in a country with a draft board that is politically motivated and not even trying to hide it. Imagine what effect that has on people’s willingness to resist the regime.

But yeah, imagine being one of those political draftees. You’re one in twenty. And everyone is told you’re a political draftee, so no one wants to trust you. They know even being near you could cast suspicion on them. The vast majority of those around you are just poor unlucky bastards whose number came up. They tried their best to remain outside of politics, but politics came for them anyway. They just want to quietly do their time, keep their head down, and do their best to survive. Imagine being one of those one in twenty and trying to organize a coup. Maybe it would work. But history shows such rebellions are quite rare.

Not if they use the Russian approach of not training you, not giving you a proper weapon, and sending you out to swarm the enemy and keep them busy killing you in large numbers. And shooting you themselves if you ask questions.

Not if you ship them all off to be killed in war with little to no training first.