Single-winner voting systems such as FPTP are what causes a party to dominate at a local level, and also what creates a century-old two party system.

Surely that is because cities are diverse and multicultural, something that the GOP has been trying to cast as a negative since at least Reagan.

Citation needed.

Let's not turn this in to a pointless political debate. But stories such as the Republican appointee to the DoI saying "diversity isn't important" [0] lead some people to conclude that there's effort to cast other goals as more important than diversity. There are enough threads on HN debating the relative merits of diversity and meritocracy that there's no need to add them here, but this is just an answer to the citation request.

0: https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/26/politics/ryan-zinke-diversity...

Is he really wrong though? What purpose does artificially created diversity serve? Shouldn't we always be looking for the best qualified individuals?

The goal should always be equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.

We should be looking for the individuals that will most improve the organization. That may mean hiring someone adequate today instead of someone spectacular who can start in 3 months. That could also mean choosing someone with a different background to most people in the organization. People with different backgrounds will have different biases and think about things differently. Having multiple perspectives is valuable in many organizations.

This is the bailey in the motte-and-bailey defense of diversity. Of course people from different backgrounds will contribute differing perspectives. But in practice, it always ends up being race, gender, and sexual orientation. No talk about getting representatives from groups that actually think in ways that are different. Where are the quotas for libertarians, green party members, immigrants, aspies, former attorneys, artists, competitive athletes, scoutmasters, stamp collectors, gearheads, all shades of personality types?

Spot on. While the idea behind can be interesting, it is implemented by accepting people who have the same "social status" background (same schools, same opinions), but are of different gender/race.

I think that a white factory worker could add way more insight into how other communities views things, than hiring a black/female attorney does...

Having said that, I'm really afraid what the backlash against this type of diversity-thinking will be. The system will surely corrects itself in the future (it's already starting), but I'm not certain going back to another extreme would be very wise...

> diverse and multicultural, something that the GOP has been trying to cast as a negative since at least Reagan. reply

> stories such as the Republican appointee to the DoI saying "diversity isn't important" [0] lead some people to conclude that there's effort to cast other goals as more important than diversity.

Diversity being negative, and diversity being unimportant are two different statements.