Under the laws of D.C. and fifty states, a nominee for President must sign an official designation of his/her Presidential Electors. Only at that point can anyone in any of those 51 jurisdictions file suit claiming that Obama is not qualified under the US Constitution to be President, and therefore unqualified to sign that designation.
The cases could be in state or federal court, though I would expect federal would be preferred. And there is zero doubt that with up to 51 different cases, there would be two that disagreed. Therefore, the issue would reach the Supreme Court on an accelerated basis to make the mega-decision, either yes he is qualified, or no he is not qualified.
All right now here, sir, your conclusion about absence of a current judicial remedy is in my opinion correct. As I am sure you are aware, there were a number of Federal District Court actions commenced seeking a Mandamus type of remedy to state election officials to require them to decertify the delegates they have certified to the National Convention pledged to McCain on the grounds that he is not eligible. (Someone posted that one of those cases has been dismissed--I have been unable to locate the court file.)
As far as I can determine, although the rest of those cases survive procedural dismissal periods, they have not been pursued--which in McCain's case would be easy to do with a Summary Judgment Motion because there are no facts in dispute. That hasn't happened because in order to affect the delegate count, it would be necessary to pursue most of the cases and win them all. And I assume those cases were filed, not for the purposes of obtaining an adjudication but rather to affect the Credentials Committee.
In my view, similar cases could and should have been filed against Obama and those actions would in fact have presented a "case or controversy" which would get you to the appellate courts. That didn't happen and it is now in my view too late to get a decision in that kind of case.
However, you say "Under the laws of D.C. and fifty states, a nominee for President must sign an official designation of his/her Presidential Electors. Only at that point can anyone in any of those 51 jurisdictions file suit claiming that Obama is not qualified under the US Constitution to be President, and therefore unqualified to sign that designation". It seems to me that at that point, you would still get thrown out on the "no present case or controversy" because the court would say, "well he might not win the election in which case the argument would be moot".
The argument to the contrary would be that you were depriving the voters of the state of the opportunity to vote for an eligible candidate. You might be able to create an original jurisdiction argument (Supreme Court--a case involving an argument between two states) if you could get a Secretary of State of one state to refuse to accept the elector designation and then sue a state that did accept on an Equal Protection theory (Bush v. Gore). Do you know of any legal research that has been done on any of these matters?
I see the argument as resolved before the nomination process is concluded, both as to Obama and Senator McCain. If either one of these guys got elected, every one of their legal acts as president would be subject to challenge in any available District Court on the theory that the act was void because the actor was not "eligible" to hold the office. I doubt that the political establishment is likely to let the argument get that far down the road because it exposes the country to being tied up without executives who can act.
On the other hand, if the argument is not resolved by the political process, and there is post election litigation, one would like to be as prepared as possible.
When a candidate signs the certification for his/her Electoral College delegates, that is an official act which has a factual consequence. As a result, the appropriate number of Electors will become official candidates on the ballot in each jurisdiction. (Under state laws, when you vote for “Smith” for President, you are actually voting for the Electors for Smith for President.)
So, contrary to your conclusion, the issue is ripe for adjudication. The case does NOT have to wait until a candidate wins the election before a decision can be reached.
As for your reference to Bush v. Gore, I wrote one of the 14 briefs in that case. There are no issues common to that case and the present issue.
John / Billybob