The outage occurred on Monday night, 26 October 2026, just one week before the November 3 midterm elections The US Federal Election Commission (FEC) has temporarily shut down its electronic filing system following a suspected hacking attempt.
The US Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) electronic filing system was taken offline after an attempted cyberattack, disrupting campaign finance disclosures a week before the November 3 midterm elections, Reuters reported, citing an email sent to campaign compliance firms. The outage has prevented political organisations from submitting mandatory 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports, which provide details of campaign expenditure on specific races. Steven Mele, president and CEO of political finance compliance firm MBA Consulting Group, said he had never seen such an incident in 26 years.
As a result, we’ve had to temporarily shut down our web-facing services,” Reuters reported. The disruption comes as political groups and super PACs spend record amounts in the final days of the campaign. An FEC electronic filings officer said in an email to campaign compliance firms on Monday night, “We have a bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems.
The outage comes as the November 3 midterm elections have become the most expensive US election in history, with around $11.21 billion spent on advertising and future reservations so far, according to political advertising tracker AdImpact. The figure surpasses the $11.2 billion spent across all races in the 2024 elections, including $3.2 billion on the presidential contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
The disruption is therefore not expected to affect voters’ ability to cast their ballots. The FEC tracks campaign spending by candidates and political committees but does not administer elections. Campaign spending reaches record levels