Hackers Target Federal Election Commission, Blocking New Campaign Spending Reports Ahead of Midterms

A suspected cyberattack has disrupted the US Federal Election Commission's electronic filing system during the final week before the 3 November midterm elections, delaying campaign finance disclosures at a crucial point in the race for control of Congress.

The system went offline at about 10 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, 26 October, after an FEC filing officer warned compliance firms that an unidentified actor was attempting to breach the agency's systems. The commission said its IT staff were working to restore the service and later reported that the issue had been identified and a fix was being implemented. The system was still reported offline in the latest update available on 27 October.

Outage Interrupts Time-Sensitive Spending Reports

The disruption prevents political organisations from submitting certain mandatory reports detailing independent spending on specific races. Under federal rules, qualifying independent expenditures can trigger 48-hour reporting requirements when they exceed $10,000 (£7,500) within the relevant period, while expenditures of $1,000 (£750) or more during the final 19 days before an election can require reporting within 24 hours.

These disclosures offer a timely view of which candidates and causes political groups are backing or opposing, and how campaign money is moving in the closing days before voters cast their ballots. Previously filed reports remained searchable on the FEC website, according to the commission.

The immediate problem is therefore the interruption to new filings, rather than the wholesale disappearance of existing public records. The outage does not affect the mechanics of voting. The FEC oversees federal campaign finance disclosure and enforcement, but it does not administer elections or operate polling systems.

Record Advertising Spending Raises the Stakes

The interruption comes as political advertising spending and future reservations for the 2026 election cycle have reached about $11.21 billion (£8.41 billion), according to AdImpact. That exceeds the roughly $11.2 billion (£8.4 billion) recorded across the 2024 election cycle, which included about $3.2 billion (£2.4 billion) in advertising for the presidential contest.

Super political action committees (PACs), which can raise unlimited sums from individuals, corporations, and other permitted sources for independent political spending, are among the groups driving the surge. Brendan Glavin, research director at non-partisan campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets, said super PACs and groups that do not fully disclose their donors had spent an average of more than $50 million (£37.5 million) a day during the preceding week.

More than $250 million (£187.5 million) in spending was reported on 20 October alone, he said. The scale of spending makes timely disclosure particularly significant. When new filings cannot be submitted, voters, journalists, and watchdog groups have less immediate information with which to assess the money shaping the final stretch of campaigning.

Cause of the Incident Remains Unconfirmed

An FEC electronic filings officer told campaign compliance firms, 'We have a bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems. As a result, we've had to temporarily shut down our web-facing services.' Steven Mele, president and chief executive of political finance compliance firm MBA Consulting Group, said he had never seen a comparable incident in 26 years. He warned that disclosure would be reduced until the system was restored.

The FEC declined to provide further details. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation referred questions to the commission, according to reporting published on 27 October.

No public information has established who was responsible for the attempted breach or whether data was accessed, stolen, or altered. With Election Day approaching, the priority is restoring filing access so political committees can submit required reports and the public can regain timely visibility into campaign spending.