President Trump dissolved the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity through Executive Order 13820 on January 3, 2018, formally terminating the body after approximately eight months of operation. The commission, established in May 2017 under the chairmanship of Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, had undertaken an extensive data collection effort requesting voter information from all 50 states. The executive order stripped the commission of its authority and operational capacity before it could complete its stated investigative mission regarding voter fraud and election security vulnerabilities.

The termination directly affected the commission's staff and the 50 state election officials who had received the commission's inquiries. Many states had resisted providing personal voter data, citing privacy concerns and questioning the commission's legal authority to demand such records. The abrupt dissolution prevented the commission from publishing findings or recommendations that might have influenced subsequent election administration policies at the federal or state level. This left the substantial effort to gather and analyze election data unfinished and its conclusions undisclosed to the public.

The commission's termination represented a significant moment in a broader pattern of election-related executive actions that would escalate considerably in subsequent years. While the 2018 dissolution appeared to pause one particular initiative, subsequent Trump administration policies—including the 2026 Executive Order on Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections and the pending restrictions on USPS mail ballot distribution—suggest a sustained focus on altering election administration mechanisms. These later actions echo the commission's original framing of election integrity while implementing substantive changes to voting access and verification procedures.

The closure of the commission did not face immediate court challenges, as executive orders establishing commissions generally fall within presidential discretion. However, the broader trajectory of election-related directives has generated constitutional questions about voting access and equal protection, issues that continue to surface in contemporary litigation involving redistricting and federal election administration.