The Federal Election Commission's electronic filing system went offline Monday night, one week before the midterm elections, and remained down on Tuesday while the agency's IT staff worked to restore it.2,3
The outage prevents electronic filings with the agency, including the submission of 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports, which disclose spending by political groups and other entities on specific races, according to the Daily Caller. Public access to campaign finance reports filed earlier was not affected.2
An FEC spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Caller that the agency's IT staff are working to restore service. "At this time, we can point to the status update posted to the FEC's website that the electronic filing system is currently offline and our IT staff are actively working to restore service. The website search for FEC reports is not affected," the spokesperson wrote.2,3
The FEC also acknowledged the problem in a post on X on Tuesday. "FEC's electronic filing system is offline. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to resolve the issue."2
None of the reports gives a cause for the outage. The Japan Times headline described hackers as having targeted the FEC system, and the Daily Caller said the website was "targeted by a hacker or hackers." The Hill, citing the FEC's incident update page, said the agency stated Monday night that it was "investigating this issue." The Daily Caller's headline also said emails showed the outage, but the text of its article does not describe those emails.1,2,3
According to the agency's status update, as reported by the Daily Caller, the electronic filing system had been offline since approximately 10 p.m. ET on Monday. The Hill described the outage as hours-long.2,3
The incident comes one week before the midterm elections. The Daily Caller noted that the FEC oversees campaign finance disclosures rather than election administration, and said the outage is not expected to affect voters' ability to cast ballots.2
The agency declined to provide further details about the outage. The Daily Caller said it contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation for comment and had not received a response in time for publication.2
The reports do not say when service will be restored. The public can continue searching previously filed reports through the agency's online database, according to the Daily Caller.2,3
