The Federal Election Commission’s electronic filing system went offline Monday night after a hacker attempted to breach the agency’s systems. The disruption has prevented political organizations from submitting required campaign spending reports.
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.” By Tuesday evening, the agency said the issue had been identified and a fix was being implemented, although the filing system remained offline. Steven Mele, president and CEO of political finance compliance firm MBA Consulting Group, said, “I’ve never seen this in 26 years.”
The outage prevented organizations from submitting required 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports that disclose political spending on specific races. OpenSecrets research director Brendan Glavin said super PACs and dark-money groups had spent an average of more than $50 million per day over the previous week. He added that more than $250 million in spending was reported on October 20 alone. Glavin said the outage leaves voters unable to track who is financing campaigns and where the money is being spent until the system is restored.
The midterm elections are already the most expensive U.S. elections in history, with approximately $11.21 billion spent so far in advertising, spending, and reservations.
