When President Trump insisted that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election, we were told that this allegation was pure fantasy. That’s still the case.

What is disturbing, however, is that we also were told that the number of people who cast illegal ballots in Pennsylvania was negligible; we now find that this may have not been the case.

How widespread the problem really is has not been fully documented, so we were relying on Secretary of State Pedro Cortes, a Democratic political appointee of Gov. Tom Wolf who serves as the state’s top election official, and his office to sort it all out.

Then, last week, the waters became muddier when Cortes abruptly announced that he was stepping down immediately. Even more puzzling was his refusal to give a reason for his sudden departure.

The move came a week after 16 Republican members of the state House of Representatives sent Cortes a letter requesting a verification of the state’s voter records following charges that the Department of State had allowed noncitizens legally residing in the state to register to vote while they were applying for or renewing their driver’s licenses.

The author of the letter, Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, chair of the House State Government Committee, said he and his colleagues, including State Rep. Jerry Knowles, R-Schuylkill, are in the dark about Cortes’ surprising action but that they want answers.

They are looking to hold a hearing to find out why specifically foreign nationals got on the voting rolls in the first place.

Originally, Metcalfe raised the issue during a hearing of his committee when Cortes testified before it in October 2016. Just as we do, Metcalfe finds the timing of Cortes’ resignation fishy.

“It is interesting that his resignation occurred within a week of our letter to him about this serious issue,” Metcalfe said.

Cortes is the first Latino to head a state cabinet agency and the longest-serving Secretary of State in the state’s history. He also had served under former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, from 2003 until 2010. He has been replaced by Executive Deputy Secretary of State Robert Torres.

In Pennsylvania, the governor appoints the secretary of state, usually from the same political party who serves at his pleasure.

We have been told that there was some kind of an electronic glitch in the driver’s license application form.

We found out about it first from Al Schmidt, a Republican who sits on Philadelphia’s three-member election commission.

He alleges that since 2006, about 320 noncitizens registered to vote through the “motor voter” driver’s licensing system. In some cases, Schmidt said, some of those who registered did actually cast ballots, and, in some cases, did so in more than one election. The problem was discovered, Schmidt said, when some of these illegal voters canceled their voter registrations.

Even though the number verified is relatively small in relation to the total number of registered voters in the state — 8.45 million — Schmidt believes that many others may have registered through the system not only in Philadelphia but throughout the state.

We share Schmidt’s overriding concern, regardless of the number.

“It is harmful to election integrity, and it is harmful to members of the immigrant community who are applying for citizenship,” he said.

What some of these people may not realize is that if they registered to vote without citizenship, it could be grounds to deny their future citizenship application.

Driver’s license applicants were asked if they wanted to register to vote, even though they were not citizens.

The Department of State said it had begun changing the sequence of questions at Penn-DOT kiosks in August 2016 in an effort to correct the error.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com