A disruption to the US Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) online services has affected campaign finance disclosures just days before the November 3 midterm elections, following a reported attempt to breach its systems.
An email sent by the FEC to a campaign compliance firm reportedly stated, “We have a bad actor trying to breach FEC systems. As a result, we’ve had to temporarily suspend our web-facing services,” according to reports.
The outage has prevented organisations from submitting the FEC’s 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports, which track spending by political groups and candidates in specific races. The FEC website showed the system was down after 10:15 p.m. EST on Monday (2:15 a.m. GMT on Tuesday).
An update posted at 8:17 p.m. EST on Tuesday said, “The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.”
The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency referred questions about the incident to the FEC.
Campaign spending under scrutiny
Although the FEC does not administer US elections, the reported cyber incident comes as Super PACs and dark money groups increase spending ahead of the midterms.
Democratic FEC Commissioner Dara Lindenbaum wrote on X, “This has NOTHING to do with voter files or voter registration. Those are maintained by the states. The FEC only handles federal campaign finance findings.
“We are working hard to restore the systems as soon as possible.”
The midterm elections have become the most expensive in US history, with around $11.21 billion spent on advertising and future reservations so far, according to political advertising tracker AdImpact. This exceeds the previous record of $11.2 billion set during the 2024 elections, which included $3.2 billion in spending on the presidential contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
Super PACs, independent political committees that can accept unlimited contributions from wealthy individuals and corporations, account for much of the spending and face few restrictions on campaign expenditure.
Brendan Glavin, research director at nonpartisan campaign watchdog OpenSecrets, said Super PACs and dark money groups had spent an average of $50 million per day over the past week.
“It’s a big deal,” Glavin said. “In the last days of the election, this is the only way for us to keep track of where the money is being spent.”
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