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Federal Election Commission systems were targeted by an attempted breach just one week prior to the November 3 midterms, and the agency had to temporarily shut down its online electronic filing system.
According to the FEC’s Status Page, the Federal Election Commission first took down its online system for filing election finance reports at 10 p.m. ET on Monday. A FEC official handling online filings for the agency later that night told several campaign compliance firms, “We have a bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems. As a result, we’ve had to temporarily shut down our web-facing services.”
The shutdown blocks filing of the 24 hour and 48 hour reports that political groups use to disclose spending on individual races in the days leading up to an election. By 8pm ET on Tuesday, FEC officials said they had identified the problem and were working to correct it but in the meantime, online filing of reports remained unavailable.
FEC Deputy Press Officer Myles Martin told Newsweek that FEC staff were working to bring back the system as soon as possible and that search for existing reports would function as normal. Reports already filed remain available on the Commission’s website. The agency has not said who is behind the attempt or whether any breach actually succeeded. The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency both directed questions on the matter to the FEC.
That would be bad timing. In the last week alone, Super PACs and “dark money” groups spent an average of more than $50 million per day according to data compiled by the research director of OpenSecrets, Brendan Glavin. Spending reported on October 20 alone topped $250 million. “These are the key reports that tell us what is happening,” said Glavin.
"I've never seen this in 26 years," said Steven Mele, a political finance compliance expert with MBA Consulting Group, in a story published by Reuters. "The result is there will be less disclosure on the elections," he said.
AdImpact puts current spending and future reservations at around $11.21 billion, surpassing the $11.2 billion spent in all races in 2024, including the $3.2 billion spent on the Trump-Harris presidential race. A huge portion of that money is being spent by Super PACs that can take in unlimited amounts of money from wealthy individuals and corporations.
The FEC tracks and tallies campaign money but does not run elections, set up or manage polling places or count ballots. The outage is not expected to affect voting. The midterms will determine whether President Trump's party keeps its majorities in Congress for the remaining two years of his term.
