Here’s how SCOTUS would rule:
Neither voters nor opposing candidates have standing to challenge any presidential candidate’s eligibility in court. And the courts have no jurisdiction. The only institution with authority is the Electoral College.
But the electors don’t need to go to the courts anyway as they are already given broad powers - even to the extreme case of voting for a different candidate than the winner of the individual elector’s state (for most states).
Well within such broad powers is the authority to resolve ambiguity in the Constitution’s definition of natural born citizen. If electors decide a candidate doesn’t meet the requirement, they are free to vote for another candidate. If this results in no candidate having a majority of electoral votes, the Constitution provides that the state delegations in the House of Representatives elect the president.
Consider a hypothetical: what if the fatherhood of a foreign born candidate is in doubt - say in the case of in vitro fertilization where the records were lost, destroyed, or dubious, but there was a strong suggestion the father was foreign born (and the mother was natural born by the most stringent definition).
The individual electors are empowered by the Constitution to either vote for or against this candidate, not based on evidence, but on their own belief. As above, no court would have the authority to hear the case.
The Founders provided a safety valve in the form of the individual judgment of the members of the Electoral College - not lawyers, statutes, legal tracts, or judges. They knew the will of The People of a republic would be in better hands that way.
I once supposed that anyone who donated to a questionable candidate should have standing to sue on the grounds of fraudulent solicitation. The rationale is that if a candidate knows he is ineligible and sets up a contribution structure anyway, how is that any different than someone setting up a fake charity to defraud donors and steal their money?
That is why a donor who is actually harmed by loss of money on fraudulent terms should have standing to sue the candidate to prove his eligibility, and therefore prove that campaign solicitations are not fraudulent.
What do you think of that angle? Does the donor have to wait for the Electoral College to deny qualification before they can sue for fraud, or can they sue while the fraud is still ongoing?
-PJ
That was before the election of Senators was removed from the states themselves and given to the voters.