The V(T)–V(C) Gap: The Epistemic Structure of Electoral Authorization

What does a voter actually choose when voting for a candidate whom they do not know personally? This article examines the epistemic structure of electoral choice and identifies a gap between the object that voters can access and the object that electoral institutions subsequently treat as authorized. In mass elections, voters typically encounter candidates through publicly constructed representations produced by communicative, media, marketing, and organizational technologies. We denote the resulting preference as V(T), where T represents the technology of political representation, and distinguish it from V(C), a preference for the real candidate C. The authorization model of representation, however, treats electoral victory as evidence of personal authorization of C. The transition from V(T) to V(C) is rarely articulated or justified. We argue that it cannot be established merely by the fact of electoral choice: thought experiments demonstrate that changes in the technology of representation can alter electoral outcomes while the candidate remains unchanged. We further examine whether retrospective accountability resolves the problem and argue that it relocates rather than eliminates the epistemic gap. The article concludes that electoral authorization requires a theoretically independent justification of the relation between the object of epistemic access and the object of political authorization.