WASHINGTON — The Federal Election Commission has suspended its web-facing services after what it called an attempt by “a bad actor” to breach its systems, less than a week before the November 3 midterm elections.
“We have a bad actor trying to breach FEC systems. As a result, we’ve had to temporarily suspend our web-facing services,” the agency said in an email to a campaign compliance firm, according to Reuters.
A status message on the FEC website showed the system went down after 10:15 p.m. EST on Monday. An update posted Tuesday at 8:17 p.m. EST said: “The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.” The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency referred questions to the FEC.
The outage prevents campaigns and political groups from filing the FEC’s 24- and 48-hour reports, which track late spending on specific races, Al Jazeera reported.
The FEC does not administer elections. Democratic Commissioner Dara Lindenbaum wrote on X that the incident has “NOTHING to do with voter files or voter registration,” which are maintained by the states.
The disruption comes as the midterms have become the most expensive US elections on record, with about $11.21 billion spent or reserved on advertising, according to tracker AdImpact. Super PACs and dark money groups have spent an average of $50 million a day over the past week, said Brendan Glavin of OpenSecrets.
“It’s a big deal,” Glavin said. “In the last days of the election, this is the only way for us to keep track of where the money is being spent.”
Sources: Al Jazeera, Federal Election Commission
—
