FEC Electronic Filing System Offline After Reported Hacking Attempt a Week Before Midterms

The U.S. Federal Election Commission's electronic filing system went offline around 10 p.m. ET Monday after a hacker or hackers targeted the agency's systems, a week before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, according to an email seen by Reuters. An FEC filings official told campaign compliance firms a "bad actor" was trying to breach the systems and that public-facing services had been shut down. The FEC said its IT staff were working to restore service, and on Tuesday night said it had identified the problem and was implementing a fix, but the system was still down early Wednesday. The agency has not said who was responsible, whether anyone gained access or whether data was compromised. Previously filed reports remain searchable. The FEC does not administer elections, so voting is unaffected. The outage blocks the 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports that show money going into specific races. Steven Mele of MBA Consulting Group said he had not seen this in 26 years and that disclosure would be thinner until repairs are made. The midterms will decide whether President Donald Trump's Republicans keep their congressional majorities.

Left-leaning HuffPost, running Reuters copy, leads with the disruption to campaign finance disclosure. It features the FEC's statement and Mele's quote, and notes that the agency has no role in running elections, which limits the stakes for voters. It also frames the timing around Trump's Republicans' majorities. Right-leaning Daily Wire uses a more dramatic headline ("Strike At Heart") and calls the timing "particularly concerning." It emphasizes lost public tracking by voters, journalists and watchdogs, and adds a Politico source who said staff detected the intrusion early. In the portions provided, it omits Mele and the point about ballots. Both cite the Reuters email and the offline system. Alternative-leaning CNBC differs by explaining the 20-day reporting rules and citing Elon Musk's America PAC's nearly $6.8 million in expenditures.