The Federal Election Commission’s electronic filing system was offline ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, preventing organizations from submitting new electronic campaign-finance reports. Reuters reported that an FEC electronic filings officer warned campaign compliance firms in a Monday night email: “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 officer described an attempted breach, not a completed one.
An FEC status message cited by Reuters put the start of the filing outage at around 10 p.m. ET on Oct. 26. Around 8 p.m. ET on Oct. 27, another message said the issue “has been identified and a fix is being implemented.” The website notice still said filing was offline. The FEC told Silicon UK its IT staff were working to restore service; previously filed reports remained searchable.
The outage blocked organizations from filing 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports, which show spending on specific races, Reuters reported. Taylor Giorno of The Washington Sun separately reviewed an FEC email telling a political committee it could not submit electronic reports. FEC spokesperson Myles Martin also confirmed to The Sun that FEC Notify, the agency’s filing-alert service, was offline. The email reviewed by The Sun did not give a cause.
Brendan Glavin, research director at OpenSecrets, called the outage “a big deal” and told Reuters the reports help track where election money is spent and who spends it. The FEC does not administer U.S. elections, and Reuters said the filing outage should have no effect on voters’ ability to cast ballots.
