FEC Filing System Stays Offline Days Before Midterms After Reported Hacking Attempt

The Federal Election Commission said Tuesday night that it had identified the problem affecting its electronic filing system and was putting a fix in place. The statement followed reports that a hacker or hackers had targeted the agency's systems only days before the midterm elections.

Even so, the system was still offline early Wednesday. That cut off a key window into campaign finance just as spending in the final stretch of the race accelerates.

According to an email obtained by Reuters, an FEC electronic filings official told campaign compliance firms on Monday night that a "bad actor" was trying to breach the agency's systems and that public-facing services had been shut down. The filing system has been down since roughly 10 p.m. ET Monday.

The commission has not said who might be responsible for the reported attempt, whether anyone got into its systems, or whether any data was compromised. Reports filed before the outage can still be searched. The FEC told CNBC its IT staff is working to bring the service back.

The timing matters because of disclosure rules that apply late in a campaign. In the last 20 days before an election, candidate committees must report certain contributions or loans of $1,000 or more within 48 hours. Political committees and outside groups must disclose certain spending within 24 hours. The requirements are meant to give voters a near-real-time picture of the money flowing into races when it counts most.

A CNBC analysis of FEC filings shows how quickly such spending appears. Elon Musk's America PAC, for instance, reported nearly $6.8 million in independent expenditures for communications disseminated Oct. 20. With the filing system down, money on that scale could enter races while the public cannot see it.

The gap comes during what is on track to be the costliest U.S. election cycle on record for political advertising. AdImpact reported $11.21 billion spent or reserved as of Monday night. CNBC's analysis found that political committees and other outside groups reported nearly $610 million in independent expenditures for communications disseminated from Oct. 20 through Oct. 26, an average of about $87 million a day.

The outage also affects an agency already operating with limited capacity. The FEC is an independent body with six commissioners that oversees campaign finance law and has no role in administering elections. It has had only two members since October 2025 and has lacked the four commissioners required to take official action since May 2025. Career staff have kept processing disclosures and handling day-to-day operations.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency did not respond to a request for comment. The Federal Bureau of Investigation deferred questions to the FEC.