Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, applied for conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War. “As a college student in the 1960’s, he was a pacifist: He isn’t now,” Michael Briggs, a Sanders spokesman, said in an e-mail to ABC News. Bernie Sanders speaks during an Aug. 8 rally at Hec Ed Pavilion that drew an estimated 15,000 people to the University of Washington. The rally filled the arena and left thousands outside. (Joshua Trujillo, seattlepi.com) Sanders, 73, came out of a background of anti-war and civil rights activism at the University of Chicago, belonging to such groups as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Student Peace