USAupdated 1h ago2 min read
Hackers Knocked U.S. Federal Election Commission Filing System Offline Before November 3 Elections
“Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, has spent at least $445 million to help Republicans in this cycle”
“The outage prevents organizations from filing the FEC's 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports”
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
Hackers knocked the FEC's electronic filing system offline days before the November 3 midterm elections. FEC says IT staff are working to restore service; filing system currently offline.
FEC filing system offline
Hackers targeted the U.S. Federal Election Commission's website, disrupting the agency's electronic filings system a week before the November 3 elections.
The FEC said, "at this time, the FEC’s electronic filing system is currently offline and our IT staff are actively working to restore service," and the agency said users could still search the website for past reports.
The outage prevented organizations from filing the FEC's 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports, which show how much political groups and others are spending on specific races.
Steven Mele said, "I've never seen this in 26 years," and he added, "The result is there will be less disclosure on the elections" until the system is restored.
The FEC status message said its filing system had been down since around 10 p.m. ET on Monday (0200 GMT Tuesday).
Bad actor, no vote impact
An FEC electronic filings officer told 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," according to an email seen by Reuters.
The FEC said the disruption should have no effect on voters' ability to cast ballots, and the agency said it does not play a role in administering U.S. elections.
The Hill reported that the FEC's website search function used to find campaign donations, recipients and political action committee information was not impacted by the outage.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency referred questions to the FEC, while the FBI did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Newsweek said the FEC confirmed to it that its electronic filing system remained offline Tuesday, while the agency said the website search for FEC reports was not affected.
Transparency stakes for midterms
The outage threatened campaign-finance transparency because it prevented organizations from submitting the FEC's 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports during the final stretch before the November 3 midterm elections. AdImpact said the midterms had become the most expensive U.S. election in history, with roughly $11.21 billion spent on advertising and future reservations so far, surpassing the previous record set in the 2024 elections when $11.2 billion was spent on all races. Brendan Glavin of OpenSecrets said, "It's a big deal," and he said, "These are the key reports that tell us what is happening," as the outage left voters in the dark until the filing system was back online.
The Hill said the incident comes just over a week until voters across the country will head to the polls for the midterm elections, and it said the FEC's functions should not impact the electoral process. The Jerusalem Post said the outage threatened election finance transparency, and it quoted Steven Mele saying, "The result is there will be less disclosure on the elections" until it is fixed.