An outage at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) left campaigns and political groups unable to submit time-sensitive campaign-finance reports, Reuters reported, with accelerated disclosures due before the Nov. 3 election.
Reuters reported that an FEC electronic filings officer emailed campaign compliance firms about an attempted breach of the agency’s systems and said web-facing services had been shut down. The FEC’s public notices confirm the outage but do not confirm the attempted breach or identify a cause.
The FEC status page records the disruption as beginning at 10:15 p.m. ET on Oct. 26. Online filing forms, the electronic submission system and vendor tools were listed as affected. In an update at 9:35 a.m. ET on Oct. 27, the commission said it was still investigating. Its homepage says staff are working to restore the filing system, with no restoration time given.
The outage overlaps with two accelerated disclosure periods. FEC rules require campaign committees to report contributions of $1,000 or more received from Oct. 15 through Oct. 31 within 48 hours. Political action committees, party committees and other groups must file within 24 hours when independent expenditures for the same race reach $1,000 or more during the Oct. 15-Nov. 1 period.
Reuters reported that groups could not submit those reports while the system was down, although users could still search previously filed reports. Steven Mele, president and CEO of MBA Consulting Group, told Reuters the disruption would mean “less disclosure” until service resumed.
The FEC oversees federal campaign-finance rules and disclosure. The immediate cost of the outage is reduced access to newly filed campaign-finance information. The commission’s public updates provide no restoration estimate or announcement of a change to filing deadlines; the accelerated disclosure periods cover contributions received through Oct. 31 and independent expenditures made through Nov. 1.
