The Federal Election Commission’s electronic filing system was still offline Wednesday, Oct. 28, after a reported attempt to break into agency systems prompted a shutdown, delaying campaign-finance disclosures less than a week before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
The outage began around 10 p.m. Eastern on Monday, Oct. 26, after an FEC official told companies that help campaigns follow campaign-finance rules that an unauthorized party was trying to access the agency’s systems. The commission confirmed the outage but has not publicly confirmed a break-in or said whether any data was accessed. On Tuesday evening, the FEC said it had identified the issue and was putting a fix in place.
The filing system was still down early Wednesday, and no time for restoring service had been announced. The disruption prevents candidates and political groups from submitting certain reports of campaign contributions and spending that are due within 24 or 48 hours. This makes new financial activity harder to track during the final stretch of the campaign.
Reports said previously filed disclosures remained searchable. Some tools for searching and checking filings were also listed among the affected services. The outage is not expected to interfere with voting.
The FEC oversees federal campaign-finance reporting. Election administration is handled elsewhere. The timing is significant because political spending is rising toward Election Day.
The outage temporarily limits public access to up-to-date information about who is spending money in federal races.