FEC says electronic filing system is back online after nearly two-day outage

The Federal Election Commission said Wednesday, Oct. 28, that its electronic filing system was available again after an outage that began late Monday, Oct. 26. As of late Wednesday night, a banner on the FEC home page read, "Electronic filing system is available," and said two FEC offices would be available to help filers until 8 p.m. that day.¹

The Hill reported that the FEC said in a post on X shortly before 5 p.m. EDT Wednesday that the system was "back online and available to filers" and that work was continuing to restore the system's search feature and the agency's notification service.² Reuters reported that the system had been offline for nearly 41 hours, that the FEC told users most affected services were back up and that campaign finance managers had to reset their passwords before logging back in.³

The FEC's separate public status page had not been updated to show the restoration as of 11:22 p.m. EDT Wednesday. It still listed the electronic filing submission system, online web forms and electronic filing vendor tools in "Major Outage" and the FECfile+ application in "Partial Outage," with both incidents marked unresolved. The page's electronic filing outage notice was first posted at 10:15 p.m. EDT Monday, and its most recent entry, at 8:17 p.m. EDT Tuesday, said, "The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented."⁴

What the FEC and reporters have said about the cause

Reuters reported Tuesday that an FEC electronic filings officer emailed several campaign compliance firms Monday night saying, "We have a bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems," and that the agency had to "temporarily shut down our web facing services." The email did not identify who was responsible, Reuters reported, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI referred questions to the FEC.⁵

In a statement reported by Reuters on Tuesday, the FEC said its electronic filing system "is currently offline" and its IT staff were working to restore service.⁵ Newsweek reported that the FEC had not said whether any system was breached or any information accessed.⁶ Forbes reported that the agency's statement did not address the reported hacking attempt.⁷ Nextgov/FCW reported Wednesday that an outage notification email it obtained said tools that validate campaign finance reports were among the systems offline.⁸

Reuters reported Wednesday that the FEC had not disclosed the cause of the outage and did not respond to requests for comment.³ No public FEC statement reviewed by SignalData attributes the activity to any person, group or government.⁴¹

Deadlines

The outage fell inside the last-minute disclosure windows for the Nov. 3 general election. Under the FEC's published schedule, congressional candidates' 48-hour notices of contributions cover Oct. 15 through Oct. 31, and 24-hour reports of independent expenditures cover Oct. 15 through Nov. 1.⁹¹⁰ The pre-general report, covering activity through Oct. 14, was due Oct. 22, before the outage began. The post-general report, covering Oct. 15 through Nov. 23, is due Dec. 3.⁹

Reuters reported that super PACs and other groups could not file 24- and 48-hour reports while the system was down.³ As of late Wednesday, neither the FEC home page, its status page nor its list of recent updates announced an extension or other change to any deadline.¹⁴¹¹

What the records do not show

• The FEC's public notices do not describe the cause of the outage, say whether any data was accessed, or identify anyone responsible.⁴
• No FEC notice found by SignalData says whether reports that could not be filed during the outage will be treated as timely.
• The FEC's status page did not reflect the restoration announced on the home page as of late Wednesday, and no FEC record reviewed says when search and notification features will return.
• The FEC does not run elections or count votes; the records reviewed concern campaign finance disclosure only.