By Veronika Kyrylenko
October 28, 2026
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) shut down its electronic filing system Monday night after discovering an attempted cyberattack. The outage prevents political committees from submitting their latest spending reports, just days before the most expensive midterm elections in U.S. history.
The incident began around 10:00 p.m. Eastern on October 26 when a FEC electronic filings officer informed several campaign finance compliance firms about a suspected breach attempt. “We have a bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems,” the officer stated, noting that web-facing services had been temporarily suspended.
By Tuesday evening, the agency identified the issue but had not restored service. At 3:48 p.m. on Tuesday, the FEC reported ongoing efforts to fix the system, which remained unresolved as of Wednesday morning.
The outage does not affect voting machines or ballot counting, but it disrupts public access to campaign finance disclosures. Under FEC regulations, political committees must submit reports within strict timeframes to track contributions and expenditures. These filings help voters understand who is financing federal elections.
Steven Mele, president and CEO of MBA Consulting Group, warned that the disruption undermines transparency during an election cycle marked by record spending. Brendan Glavin, research director at OpenSecrets, emphasized: “These are the key reports that tell us what is happening… In the last days of the election this is the only way for us to keep track of where the money’s being spent.”
The incident coincides with unprecedented political expenditures. AdImpact figures show political advertising and future reservations reached $11.21 billion by October 26, exceeding the total spent during the entire 2024 election cycle. OpenSecrets data indicates that super PACs and dark money organizations averaged over $50 million in daily expenditures during the week before the outage.
A Public Citizen analysis reveals how concentrated the spending has become: more than 500 donors contributed $1 million or more to super PACs, totaling $4.2 billion—over 70 percent of all funds raised. Donations of $1 million or more accounted for 94 percent of the Senate Leadership Fund’s receipts and 90 percent of MAGA Inc.’s.
The federal campaign finance system allows wealthy donors to influence elections through super PACs without full disclosure, but the current outage risks obscuring these critical disclosures.
Americans can still vote on November 3. Whether they will know who is paying to influence their choices remains uncertain.