A hacker is attempting to breach the Federal Election Commission’s systems, and the agency has had to temporarily shut down its web facing services as a result, according to an email seen by Reuters.
The email came from an FEC electronic filings officer and went out Monday night to several campaign compliance firms, the companies that help campaigns and political groups file their required paperwork. “We have a bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems,” the officer wrote. “As a result, we’ve had to temporarily shut down our web facing services.”
The Federal Election Commission is the independent agency that regulates money in federal elections. It enforces campaign finance law and collects the reports candidates, parties and political groups must file showing where their money comes from and how they spend it. It does not run elections, count votes, manage voter rolls or handle ballots. Those jobs belong to state and local election officials. Nothing reported so far involves voting systems.
What went down is the FEC’s electronic filing system, the online portal campaigns and committees use to submit those required reports. A status message posted by the agency said it has been offline since around 10 p.m. ET Monday. The FEC posted the notice after campaign finance officers were unable to file mandatory reports that night.
In a statement, the FEC said “the FEC’s electronic filing system is currently offline and our IT staff are actively working to restore service.” The agency did not address the hacking attempt directly. It said the public can still search its website for reports that were already filed, and it has not said when filing will be back up.
The timing matters because of what these reports show. In the final weeks before an election, outside groups have to file 24 hour and 48 hour reports. These are quick disclosures that show how much they are spending to support or oppose a specific candidate in a specific race, filed within a day or two of the spending. They are how voters and reporters see the late money flooding into close contests. While the system is down, those reports cannot be submitted, so that spending stays out of public view.
And there is a lot of it. Super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts as long as they don’t coordinate directly with candidates, and dark money groups, which do not have to disclose their donors, have spent an average of over $50 million per day this past week. That’s according to Brendan Glavin, research director at the nonpartisan watchdog OpenSecrets. More than $250 million in spending was reported on October 20 alone. “It’s a big deal,” Glavin said of the outage.
Steven Mele, who works in campaign finance compliance, said he had never seen anything like it in 26 years. “The result is there will be less disclosure on the elections” until the system is restored, he said.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the federal agency that helps protect government computer systems, referred questions to the FEC. The FBI did not immediately respond to Reuters. There is no public word yet on who is behind the attempt, whether any data was accessed, or whether it was a person, automated bots or both.
The midterm elections are Tuesday, November 3. Until the filing system comes back online, the public is missing a real time view of who is spending to sway the races that will decide control of Congress.
