Executive Order 13799, signed on May 11, 2017, created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to investigate election administration practices across all fifty states. The commission was tasked with examining voter registration systems, voting processes, election security protocols, and the prevalence of voter fraud. Vice President Mike Pence chaired the body, which had authority to request data from state election officials regarding voter rolls, registration procedures, and election security vulnerabilities.

The commission's work directly affected state election administrators and voting officials nationwide, who faced federal requests for sensitive voter data including names, addresses, and partial Social Security numbers. States including California, New York, and Kentucky resisted these requests, raising concerns about privacy and federal overreach into state electoral systems. Civil rights organizations, including the NAACP and Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, filed legal challenges asserting that the commission lacked statutory authority to demand voter information and that such demands violated voter privacy protections.

This initiative represented the opening salvo in a sustained effort to reshape election administration frameworks. It preceded subsequent actions by years that would become increasingly aggressive: the 2026 executive order restricting USPS mail ballot distribution, the citizenship verification mandate, and Texas redistricting protections that consolidated electoral advantages. The 2017 commission, though dissolved in January 2018 following legal defeats, established rhetorical ground for questioning election integrity—a premise that would anchor later restrictions on voting access.

The commission's July 2018 final report found no evidence of widespread voter fraud, directly contradicting the administration's stated justification for the inquiry. Legal challenges from multiple states and civil rights groups proved decisive; courts blocked the commission from accessing voter data, constraining its investigative scope. The combination of judicial resistance and the report's null findings forced the commission's dissolution, yet it successfully normalized federal scrutiny of state election systems and voter rolls—setting precedent for the expansive election administration interventions that followed.