The Federal Election Commission headquarters in Washington, D.C., photographed in April 2026.
The US Federal Election Commission (FEC) has taken its electronic filing system offline following an attempted cyberattack, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing an internal email.
The disruption comes a week before the November 3 midterm elections and has temporarily blocked political groups from submitting campaign finance reports.
According to them, an FEC electronic filings officer told several campaign compliance firms on Monday night that an unauthorised party was trying to breach the agency’s systems. The FEC shut down its internet-facing services in response, the email said.
The agency has not confirmed that a hacking attempt took place or said whether any data was accessed.
The outage began at around 10pm ET on Monday, according to the FEC’s status page. On Tuesday, an agency spokesperson told The Hill that the system remained offline while IT staff worked to restore it. Users can still search previously submitted reports on the FEC website.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) referred questions to the FEC, while the FBI did not immediately respond to Reuters. CISA is itself facing a proposed $700 million budget cut under the White House’s 2027 spending plan.
The disruption does not affect voting. US elections are administered by state and local authorities, not the FEC. B
But the outage does interfere with the reporting system used by political groups to disclose spending during the final stretch of a campaign.
Under federal rules, campaigns and political committees must submit certain reports within 24 or 48 hours of specific spending or contributions. These filings help voters and researchers track how money is flowing into individual races.
“I’ve never seen this in 26 years,” Steven Mele, president of political finance compliance firm MBA Consulting Group, told Reuters.
Brendan Glavin, research director at the nonpartisan watchdog OpenSecrets, said the outage makes it difficult to follow who is spending money and where in the final days of the campaign.
Spending has already reached record levels as political advertising spending and reservations for the 2026 elections have totalled about $11.21 billion, according to ad-tracking firm AdImpact, exceeding the $11.2 billion recorded for the entire 2024 election cycle.
Super PACs and groups that do not fully disclose their funding sources have spent an average of more than $50 million a day over the past week, according to OpenSecrets.
The FEC has not said when its electronic filing system will be restored.
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