The aim of this research is to examine the assumption underlying the epistemic theory of democracy, which holds that there is a distinction between correct and incorrect political decisions. One of the main mechanisms by which this theory demonstrates that group decisions are superior to those made by individuals is Condorcet's jury theorem, a mathematical model that establishes the near-infallibility of group decisions.
This research, using a critical-evaluative method, shows that one of the core assumptions of the jury theorem – that decisions are made between two options only – is particularly problematic for the epistemic theory. Therefore, it is necessary to find an adequate way to discard this assumption without undermining the theorem’s fundamental result.
Using a historical-interpretive method, it is shown that Condorcet's jury theorem is part of Condorcet's theory of voting, which includes additional elements aimed at overcoming the aforementioned limitation. It is argued that the epistemic theory of democracy should accept a modification that extends the jury theorem to decision-making among multiple options. However, such a modification calls into question the initial assumption about the existence of a distinction between correct and incorrect political decisions.
Through conceptual analysis, it is shown that the epistemic theory faces two problems. The first concerns the lack of criteria for distinguishing correct from incorrect options in democratic decision-making, and the second concerns the lack of guarantees that correct options will be among the set of options from which choices are made. It is established that the source of these two problems lies in the ways in which the concept of “correctness” is applied in the context of political decision-making. In the concluding part of the research, a solution is proposed that addresses both problems simultaneously
