Can you remember the good old days — say, 2015 or so — when we would say things like “can’t we all just get along?” or, “Butler doesn’t have a drug problem,” and we’d sincerely believe such things?

Yes, that’s a snarky observation. These are snarky times. But it puts in context the latest row being raised by state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe with the Pennsylvania Department of State — as the department backs away from its snarky, long-standing contention that Pennsylvania has no evidence of voter fraud — while it has been sitting on the evidence.

In 2015 a national nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) released a report detailing 86 cases where noncitizens reported their own unlawful voter registrations to City of Philadelphia officials, typically in advance of naturalization challenges between 2013 and 2015. Roughly half had voted at least once, then found out that illegal registration is grounds for permanent disqualification for U.S. citizenship.

In September 2017, a Philadelphia official disclosed a “glitch” at Department of Motor Vehicles offices that let noncitizens register to vote when they applied for a driver’s license.

The following month, two significant things happened: first, Pedro Cortes resigned as secretary of state; and second, PILF and Philadelphia election officials testified before the state House Government Committee — chaired by Metcalfe — exposing hundreds of cases of procedural failures that invited noncitizens to register to vote in PennDOT offices.

Responding to the testimony and other evidence, PILF submitted an inspection request to the Department of State under the National Voter Rights Act for all records related to noncitizen self-reported cancellations. But a subsequent site inspection failed to disclose any of the requested records.

PILF wrote again to the Department of State to expand its initial request and include records related to PennDOT matches. But the Department of State replied that documents would not be made available to PILF for inspection or reproduction, arguing that PILF had no right to documents beyond registration cancellations involving death or relocation.

In February 2018, PILF sued the Department of State in federal district court in Harrisburg, claiming as many as 100,000 or more noncitizen residents were illegally registered to vote through PennDOT’s “motor voter” registration program since the 1990s. It demanded access to records showing citizenship and voter registration status of license holder — public information under the National Voter Registration Act — after repeatedly being denied access.

“For months, Pennsylvania bureaucrats have concealed facts about noncitizens registering and voting — that ends today,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams told the Washington Times on Feb. 26, 2018.

PILF and Metcalf confirm what court documents also tell us: the Department of State and the Wolf administration have orchestrated a strategy of delay and denial.

In April, the Department of State asked the court to dismiss the case, claiming it was an attempt to purge voters. It was no such thing.

In May, the Department of State claimed it had no “removal program regarding noncitizens” and therefore did not have any records to share with PILF — but only days earlier had released contradictory evidence to news outlets “describing previous, ongoing and future efforts to identify and remove potential noncitizens” from voter rolls.

Now the numbers are moderating. PILF and Metcalfe have dropped their estimate from 100,000 to 11, 198. while the Department of State, originally hovering between zero and 86, now is conceding somewhere closer to 8,000 illegally registered voters.

The problem is that the National Voter Rights Act provides the public — me and you — unfettered access to the records. There shouldn’t be any question here. And the delay and denial leaves only one question in our minds: Who is hiding what?