Hackers are reported to have targeted the website of the US Federal Election Commission (FEC), knocking out campaign finance reporting only days before the midterm elections.
An email the FEC sent to a campaign compliance firm said there was a “bad actor” trying to breach its systems, forcing the agency to temporarily suspend its web-facing services, according to a news agency. The outage stops organisations from filing the 24- and 48-hour spending reports that show how political groups and candidates are spending on specific races.
Outage hits spending reports ahead of the vote
A status notice on the FEC website showed the system went down after 10.15pm EST on Monday, which was 2.15am GMT on Tuesday. A later update, posted at 8.17pm EST on Tuesday, said the problem had been identified and a fix was being put in place.
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The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency both referred questions to the FEC. The commission does not run US elections, but the incident comes as super PACs and dark money groups spend record sums in the final days before the midterms on November 3.
Commissioner says voter data is not affected
Democratic FEC Commissioner Dara Lindenbaum wrote on X that the incident had “NOTHING to do with voter files or voter registration,” noting that states maintain those records. She said the FEC only handles federal campaign finance filings and that staff were working to restore the systems as quickly as possible.
Midterms set a record for political ad spending
The midterms are now the most expensive US elections in history, with roughly $11.21bn spent so far on advertising and future reservations, according to the political advertising tracker AdImpact. That surpasses the $11.2bn spent across the 2024 elections, which included $3.2bn in the presidential race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to AdImpact figures.
Much of the money is coming from super PACs, independent political committees that can accept unlimited sums from wealthy individuals and corporations and spend them on campaigns with few restrictions. Brendan Glavin, research director at the nonpartisan campaign watchdog OpenSecrets, said super PACs and dark money groups have spent an average of $50m per day over the past week.
“It’s a big deal,” Glavin said. “In the last days of the election, this is the only way for us to keep track of where the money is being spent.”
