US campaign finance filing system goes offline days before midterm elections

The US Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) electronic filing and alert systems have gone offline less than a week before the Nov. 3 general election, with a reported hacking incident under investigation, according to The Washington Sun.

The outlet reported Tuesday, citing an email sent to at least one political committee, that the agency’s electronic filing system was unavailable, preventing political committees from submitting campaign finance reports electronically.

“The Federal Election Commission’s electronic filing system is currently offline,” the agency said in an email to at least one political committee reviewed by the outlet. “At this time, you cannot submit electronic reports to the FEC.”

The FEC began investigating outages Monday evening, according to its status tracker. Its FEC Notify system, which alerts subscribers to new campaign finance filings, was also offline.

“At this time, we can point to the status update posted to the FEC’s website that the electronic filing system is currently offline and our IT staff are actively working to restore service,” FEC spokesperson Myles Martin was quoted as saying in a statement.

Democratic FEC Commissioner Dara Lindenbaum said the outage does not affect voting.

“To be absolutely clear: This has NOTHING to do with voter files or voter registration,” she wrote on the US social media platform X. “Those are maintained by the states. The FEC only handles federal campaign finance filings.”