The Federal Election Commission’s electronic filing system went offline this week after a hacker or hackers targeted the agency, according to an email seen by Reuters. The outage landed one week before the November 3 midterm elections.
The FEC said its electronic filing system is currently offline and its IT staff are working to restore service. The agency said people can still search its website for past reports.
The outage blocks the 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports that show how much political groups spend on specific races. Steven Mele, a partner at political finance compliance firm MBA Consulting Group, told Reuters he had never seen such an outage in 26 years, and said there will be less disclosure on the elections until the system is fixed.
A status message from the agency said the filing system had been down since around 10 p.m. ET on Monday. The FEC does not run elections, so the outage should have no effect on voters’ ability to cast ballots.
Source: Daily Caller
