The US Federal Election Commission (FEC) has taken its electronic filing system offline after hackers attempted to breach its systems. The outage began around 10 pm ET on Monday and has disrupted campaign-finance disclosures just a week before the November 3 midterm elections.
An FEC electronic filing officer told campaign-compliance firms that a ‘bad actor’ was trying to breach the agency’s systems. The commission temporarily shut down its web-facing services to contain the threat.
The outage prevents candidates, political committees and super PACs from filing the FEC’s mandatory 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports. These filings show how much groups are spending in specific races during the final days of campaigning.
The timing matters since campaigns face tight deadlines to report large late contributions and independent expenditures. Until the system is restored, the public will have less visibility into last-minute political spending.
Users can still search the FEC website for previously filed reports. New electronic submissions, however, remain blocked. The FEC said its IT staff were working to restore the service. It did not say when the system would return or whether any data had been compromised.
The FEC does not administer US elections, operate voting machines or count ballots. The agency tracks campaign spending and enforces federal campaign-finance rules.
Officials said the outage should have no impact on voters’ ability to cast ballots. The disruption concerns transparency around campaign funding, not election administration. The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The FEC also declined to provide further details about the attempted breach
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