The Democrat and Republican intern selfies: spot the difference

The people of the United States are about to make one of the most important decisions in generations - a choice of, as one commentator put it, democracy or authoritarianism.

As current president Barack Obama explained this week - a vote for the Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton or the Republican nominee Donald Trump is...

...not just a choice between parties or policies; the usual debates between left and right. This is a more fundamental choice – about who we are as a people, and whether we stay true to this great American experiment in self-government.

As the fortnight holding the two party conventions draws to a close, one of the starkest differences between the Dems and the GOP was revealed by group selfies of party interns.

The Republican one, taken by speaker Paul Ryan and mocked for being "so white", looked like this:

The Democrat one, taken by Audra Jackson - an intern for representative EB Johnson, looked like this:

As Vox notes: "only one looks like America".

The 2016 electorate is expected to be the most racially and ethnically diverse body of voters in US history, with people of colour comprising 31 per cent of eligible voters in November.

More: Why Barack Obama's speech was actually quite terrifying