FEC Outage: 41 Hours of Hidden Political Spending

The Federal Election Commission kept its electronic filing system offline for nearly 41 hours to contain a cyberattack, a pause that obscured the spending of major donors just days before the midterm elections. The agency restored the service on Wednesday night, ending a blackout that left campaign finance experts without access to the latest data on political expenditures.

The outage prevented Super PACs and other groups from submitting mandatory reports due within 24 and 48 hours. These filings are required to show how much money organizations are spending to support or oppose candidates. Without the system, the most recent political spending remained hidden from public view while donations increased as the election date approached.

Molly White, a campaign finance watchdog who tracks spending by cryptocurrency firms and technology companies, described the lack of access as a major hurdle. “We didn’t have access to the last-minute spending, which is really ramped up as the election draws nearer,” White said. She noted that the filing systems being down meant there was no visibility into that activity.

The timing of the disruption coincided with the fastest pace of daily spending in the two-year election cycle. Brendan Glavin, research director at OpenSecrets, stated that Super PACs and dark money groups spent an average of over $50 million per day in the week before the outage. He added that more than $250 million in spending was reported on October 20 alone.

Hilary Braseth, executive director of OpenSecrets, argued that the delay compromised transparency. In a statement released before the system was restored, Braseth said, “Disclosure delayed is disclosure denied.” She characterized transparency as a fundamental public safeguard rather than an optional luxury when hundreds of millions of dollars in outside money flood political airwaves in the final days before an election.

The FEC announced it was investigating a problem that caused “major” outages across its systems in a notice posted just after 10 p.m. ET on Monday. An FEC officer told campaign compliance firms late Monday that the agency took its services offline after a “bad actor” attempted to breach its systems, according to an email reviewed by Reuters. Compliance managers had to reset their passwords before logging back into the system.

The agency did not return requests for comment on Wednesday and did not announce details regarding the cause of the outage. Both the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI referred questions to the FEC. Reuters could not establish the motive for the hacking effort, though hackers often target government networks for espionage, financial gain, or political reasons.

The disruption sparked debate within the industry about the timing of the attack. Several people said the lack of information from the FEC stirred up conspiracy theories. White noted that an outage would provide a convenient way for actors to hide unpopular last-minute spending. She added, “It’s hard to say with any real information that that’s what happened, but it’s certainly I think where people’s minds go very quickly.”

Kyle Sandy, cybersecurity director at IT security firm Logically, assessed the agency’s decision to take the system offline as the correct response to an attack. “It tells me the FEC detected something they couldn’t immediately scope and chose a known outage over an unknown risk,” Sandy said. He explained that the pause gave the agency time to ensure none of its data was altered by the hackers before bringing the system back online. The FEC does not administer U.S. elections, so the outage did not affect voters’ ability to cast ballots.